On Intelligence Quotes

“It is the ability to make predictions about the future that is the crux of intelligence.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Deep Blue didn't win by being smarter than a human; it won by being millions of times faster than a human. Deep Blue had no intuition. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue also had no sense of the history of the game, and didn't know anything about its opponent. It played chess yet didn't understand chess, in the same way a calculator performs arithmetic bud doesn't understand mathematics.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence

“But intelligence is not just a matter of acting or behaving intelligently. Behavior is a manifestation of intelligence, but not the central characteristic or primary definition of being intelligent. A moment's reflection proves this: You can be intelligent just lying in the dark, thinking and understanding. Ignoring what goes on in your head and focusing instead on behavior has been a large impediment to understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence

“The way to eliminate the harm caused by stereotypes is to teach our children to recognize false stereotypes, to be empathetic, and to be skeptical. We need to promote these critical-thinking skills in addition to instilling the best values we know. Skepticism, the heart of the scientific method, is the only way we know how to ferret out fact from fiction.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence

“When you ask yourself, What does an intelligent system do?, it is intuitively obvious to think in terms of behavior. We demonstrate human intelligence through our speech, writing, and actions, right? Yes, but only to a point. Intelligence is something that is happening in your head. Behavior is an optional ingredient. This is not intuitively obvious, but it’s not hard to understand either.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“The best ideas in science are always simple, elegant, and unexpected,”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“The brain is an organ that builds models and makes creative predictions, but its models and predictions can as easily be specious as valid. Our brains are always looking at patterns and making analogies. If correct correlations cannot be found, the brain is more than happy to accept false ones. Pseudoscience, bigotry, faith, and intolerance are often rooted in false analogy.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Function.” In this paper, Mountcastle points out that the neocortex is remarkably uniform in appearance and structure. The regions of cortex that handle auditory input look like the regions that handle touch, which look like the regions that control muscles, which look like Broca’s language area, which look like practically every other region of the cortex. Mountcastle suggests that since these regions all look the same, perhaps they are actually performing the same basic operation! He proposes that the cortex uses the same computational tool to accomplish everything it does.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“to take an example closer to home, consider the fact that every few years your body replaces most of the atoms that comprise you. In spite of this, you remain yourself in all the ways that matter to you. One atom is as good as any other if it’s playing the same functional role in your molecular makeup. The same story should hold for the brain: if a mad scientist were to replace each of your neurons with a functionally equivalent micromachine replica, you should come out of the procedure feeling no less your own true self than you had at the outset. By this principle, an artificial system that used the same functional architecture as an intelligent, living brain should be likewise intelligent—and not just contrivedly so, but actually, truly intelligent.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“There is a common misconception that the human brain is the pinnacle of billions of years of evolution. This may be true if we think of the entire nervous system. However, the human neocortex itself is a relatively new structure and hasn’t been around long enough to undergo much long-term evolutionary refinement.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“The neocortex is not like a computer, parallel or otherwise. Instead of computing answers to problems the neocortex uses stored memories to solve problems and produce behavior.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence

“Being human and being intelligent are separate matters.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“You can’t simulate a brain without first understanding what it does.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Intelligence and understanding started as a memory system that fed predictions into the sensory system. These predictions are the essense of understanding. To know something means that you can make predictions about it.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence

“To this day I still hear people claim that computers should adapt to users. This isn’t always true. Our brains prefer systems that are consistent and predictable, and we like learning new skills.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Shakespeare’s metaphors are the paragon of creativity. “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” “Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.” “There’s daggers in men’s smiles.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“feedback plays a minor or “modulatory” role in the brain.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“After all, behavior is the ultimate determiner of survival.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Science is itself an exercise in prediction.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Your brain has made a model of the world and is constantly checking that model against reality.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“The AI strategy is implausible.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Truly random thoughts don’t exist.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Remember, the brain is in a dark quiet box with no knowledge of anything other than the time-flowing patterns on its input fibers.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“History shows that the best solutions to scientific problems are simple and elegant.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“We demonstrate human intelligence through our speech, writing, and actions, right? Yes, but only to a point. Intelligence is something that is happening in your head. Behavior is an optional ingredient. This is not intuitively obvious, but it’s not hard to understand either.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“incorrect assumptions keep us from seeing the correct answer.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“As inspired by Alan Turing, intelligence equals behavior.”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“understanding cannot be measured by external behavior”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“we needed to understand what “understanding”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

“Thus, no matter how cleverly a computer is designed to simulate intelligence by producing the same behavior as a human, it has”
― Jeff Hawkins, On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines