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A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence Hardcover – March 2, 2021
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A bestselling author, neuroscientist, and computer engineer unveils a theory of intelligence that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI.
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence?
Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world—not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word.
One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2021
One of Bill Gates' Five Favorite Books of 2021
- Reading age1 year and up
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6.7 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication dateMarch 2, 2021
- ISBN-101541675819
- ISBN-13978-1541675810
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Editorial Reviews
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―John Thornhill, Financial Times
“Intriguing.... Insightful stuff for readers immersed in the labyrinthine world of neuroscience.”―Kirkus
"A Thousand Brains eloquently expresses the ultimate goal of thousands of scientists: to understand the mechanics of the human mind. Jeff Hawkins uses wonderfully clear and fast-moving prose to give an accessible overview of a theory of human intelligence that is likely to be very influential in the future."―Michael Hasselmo, Director, Boston University Center for Systems Neuroscience
"Jeff Hawkins’ book is that rare beast: A new theory about one of the oldest mysteries, the mystery of intelligence. The book is thoughtful and original, erudite and visionary. A must read for anyone interested in how the next breakthroughs in artificial intelligence will emerge from the recent (and not so recent) discoveries in neuroscience."―Anthony Zador, professor of neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
"Neuroscience has been exploring the wilderness of the brain for well over a century. With A Thousand Brains, at last we have a map. Jeff Hawkins takes on questions most neuroscientists don’t even dare ask, and finds answers in a new theory that explains now only how we make sense of the world, but how we are deceived. In a world threatened by the disintegration of truth into conspiracy and delusion, everyone should read this remarkable book."―Henry Markram, Professor, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, founder of the Human Brain Project
"Brilliant....It works the brain in a way that is nothing short of exhilarating."―Richard Dawkins
“A Thousand Brains takes us on a journey from the evolution of our brain to the extinction of our species. Along the way Hawkins beautifully describes neuroanatomy and landmark discoveries in neuroscience… Hawkins keeps the reader constantly engaged.”―New York Times Book Review
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Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books; First Edition (March 2, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1541675819
- ISBN-13 : 978-1541675810
- Reading age : 1 year and up
- Item Weight : 1.06 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.7 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #114,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #60 in Free Will & Determinism Philosophy
- #202 in Artificial Intelligence & Semantics
- #459 in Biology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jeff Hawkins is a well-known scientist and entrepreneur, considered one of the most successful and highly regarded computer architects in Silicon Valley. He is widely known for founding Palm Computing and Handspring Inc. and for being the architect of many successful handheld computers. He is often credited with starting the entire handheld computing industry.
Despite his successes as a technology entrepreneur, Hawkins’ primary passion and occupation has been neuroscience. From 2002 to 2005, Hawkins directed the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, now located at U.C. Berkeley. He is currently co-founder and chief scientist at Numenta, a research company focused on neocortical theory.
Hawkins has written two books, "On Intelligence" (2004 with Sandra Blakeslee) and "A Thousand Brains: A new theory of intelligence" (2021). Many of his scientific papers have become some of the most downloaded and cited papers in their journals.
Hawkins has given over one hundred invited talks at research universities, scientific institutions, and corporate research laboratories. He has been recognized with numerous personal and industry awards. He is considered a true visionary by many and has a loyal following – spanning scientists, technologists, and business leaders. Jeff was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.
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The book is full of opinions for the author, presented in an interesting inviting way. Although I did not buy many of it, but it was all though provoking to me. I am looking for books to stir my brains, this one did a good job. I am sick of books that try to stuff opinions into my brain. Lovely book. Fascinating.
The issue I had with this book and many other books is that authors lose momentum somewhere in the book and keep going to fill pages (it seems to me). The first half or so of this book is awesome, but bits of the end seemed like talking to a random people on an airplane.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to explaining the neuroscience details behind his new theory of intelligence. I found it fascinating and very readable. The second and third parts focus on machine and human intelligence, respectively.
It was the third part of the book that caught me off guard in such a beautiful way. It was full of ideas I'd never heard before, and frankly, I found them so enticing, I couldn't put the book down. The explanation of how we create false beliefs couldn't be more timely. The possibilities for addressing our ongoing struggle between genes and knowledge were stimulating and surprising.
The book has a hopeful feel, and I walked away from it feeling optimistic and enlightened. I highly recommend it.
As for revelations that he and his research group have come up with, Hawkins presents the notion that cortical columns use something he calls "reference frames" to learn models of objects, and each cortical column can learn hundreds of object models. In short, each cortical column is a semi-autonomous neural network computer that makes guesses and predictions about what's going on in the world according to whatever sensory data it is wired up to receive. Cortical columns as a group then use their sparse interconnectivity to communicate their guesses, coming to a democratic consensus about what is going on in the world and what is likely to happen next. This is the way that the neocortex perceives (is conscious of and draws conclusions about) the surrounding world.
But I found Hawkins' view of consciousness to beg the question; indeed, I wonder if he actually perceives the question. Here is a quote from page 144:
"At some point in the future, we will accept that any system that learns a model of the world, continuously remembers the states of that model, and recalls the remembered states will be conscious. There will be remaining unanswered questions, but consciousness will no longer be talked about as 'the hard problem.' It won’t even be considered a problem."
In fact, as an engineer I would point out that any control system fits this description: It learns a model of the world from its sensors and it continuously remembers/recalls (what's the difference between "remembering" and "recalling"?) the states of that model. Left out of this statement is the additional property that a control system responds in some way to a current or predicted state of the world—that is the whole point of the control system, and this "predicting the next state" phenomenon also seems to be important in Hawkins' theory of the brain, so I'm surprised that he left it out here.
Is the control system of a Boeing 737 MAX, which determines whether the plane remains safely airborne or crashes, a conscious entity?
In fact, even a simple computer program running on a computer satisfies Hawkins' definition of consciousness: The state of its "world" is the collection of values of its program variables, which it continuously "recalls" and "remembers." At each step of its execution, the simple program is making a decision about what to do next based on the values of its program variables. Is a simple computer program conscious?
And where do you draw the boundary that separates one conscious entity from another? The internet, for example, is a worldwide system that has memory in the form of (for example) the routing tables in all the thousands of routers that control the flow of traffic. The state of "the world" from the internet's perspective is the pattern of traffic flowing over the internet's thousands of links, and the collection of thousands of routing tables is the internet's collective memory. As the routers sense the traffic flowing through them, they cooperate in adjusting their tables with the goal of keeping the flow of traffic as efficient as possible. Is the internet conscious? Maybe. Or maybe the individual routers are separately conscious, just like New York City is composed of eight million separately conscious entities but does not have a collective consciousness of its own. (However, some might argue that cities such as New York DO have a collective consciousness of their own; their unique and special "spirit of place." Perhaps a multitude of interacting, separately conscious entities create a meta-consciousness, such as bees that swarm and build a hive or ants that cooperate to construct and operate their anthill home.)
My goal in these comments is not to argue about what is or is not conscious, but simply to point out that I think Hawkins gives short shrift to the philosophical conundra underlying the whole question of consciousness.
This probably lies at the foundation of my overarching criticism of Hawkins' book, although I hesitate to use the word "criticism" because I found the book fascinating and I think what he and other researchers are doing to uncover the mysteries of the brain is very valuable. Anyway, my criticism is that he merely places labels on things without dealing with the real questions—although I freely admit that the "real questions," as I call them, may be unanswerable. Before I read Hawkins' book, indeed, long before I even had any formal education, I knew that the human brain was a processing system with memory. Without sounding disparaging, I hope, I say that all Hawkins has done is put labels on some aspects of its behavior. What difference does it make that a human, such as Hawkins, invents a term, such as "reference frames," to discuss what a cortical column does? Does the individual neuron or synapse "understand" the reference frame concept? Of course not. They are cells that do what they do, regardless of the name plastered on their behavior by a human. The real question is: Regardless of what terms you invent to talk about it, how is it that what they do, that is, how they interact with each other, produces, in the end, this thing called consciousness?
Maybe there is no answer. I just prefer that researchers not pretend to have an answer when they do not.
The first section of the book outlines a biological theory of how the brain works. There are many books written about what the brain does, but a surprising paucity of detailed theories explaining *how* it works. In full disclosure, I worked at Numenta a few years ago, so I am biased. But much of that bias comes from exposure to the rigor with which Jeff and the team approached the problem of solving the problem of intelligence. They weren't trying to find *a* model of intelligence. They were seeking *the* model that the neocortex applies, and build algorithms that replicated the mechanisms. So they did not allow themselves to take shortcuts--if they found any neurological evidence that contradicted their theories, they forced themselves to modify the theories or explain the discrepancy. I've been following Hawkins' work too long to have a perspective about whether his theories are understandable to a layperson on a first read. If you suspect he is hand waving, though, I can tell you that his theories go much deeper than what he described in the book. It took me months to understand the significance of the fundamental problem of "representation," and even longer to understand how elegantly sparse distributed representations solves the problem, in a way that is consistent with the biological evidence. All of that barely got a few sentences. And those of you who read On Intelligence may be surprised to find only a few pages dedicated to predictions, which was the core of his earlier work but is now demoted to a sub-component of his larger theory. You don't have to trust me, though. Watch the YouTube videos of his presentations (they are a better summary than the interview videos). Or if you are more technically inclined, read the papers.
Having articulated a theory of intelligence (a dependent clause you don't see often!), Hawkins shifts gears in the second section to discuss whether AI is an existential threat to humanity. Spoiler alert: no. Intelligence (and by extension, machine intelligence), is morally neutral. But human intelligence, with its survivalist lizard brain riding shotgun, is another story. The third section of the book delves into how human intelligence can be an existential threat to humanity. and what we can do about it (how can you not read a book with a chapter called "Estate planning for humanity?").
The structure of this book fascinates me. The three sections could potentially stand independently, and yet together form an expansive view of humanity. Even if Hawkins does not convince you that his ideas are correct, his delightfully accessible prose will provide you insight into cutting-edge, peer-reviewed research about one of the deepest puzzles that has eluded scientists and philosophers for centuries (plus thought provoking discussion of the potential consequences). But if Hawkins' theories are in fact correct, then readers of this book are witnessing the foundation of intelligence theory, much like readers of "On the Origin of Species" witnessed the founding of evolutionary biology.