advanced robots of our time are lumbering zombies? Why are three-year-olds
already well on their way to mastering language while computers can't, despite
half a century of programmers' best efforts? Why can you tell a cat from a dog in a
fraction of a second while a supercomputer cannot make the distinction at all?
These are great mysteries waiting for an answer. We have plenty of clues; what
we need now are a few critical insights.
You may be wondering why a computer designer is writing a book about brains. Or
put another way, if I love brains why didn't I make a career in brain science or in
artificial intelligence? The answer is I tried to, several times, but I refused to study
the problem of intelligence as others have before me. I believe the best way to
solve this problem is to use the detailed biology of the brain as a constraint and as
a guide, yet think about intelligence as a computational problem— a position
somewhere between biology and computer science. Many biologists tend to reject
or ignore the idea of thinking of the brain in computational terms, and computer
scientists often don't believe they have anything to learn from biology. Also, the
world of science is less accepting of risk than the world of business. In technology
businesses, a person who pursues a new idea with a reasoned approach can
enhance his or her career regardless of whether the particular idea turns out to be
successful. Many successful entrepreneurs achieved success only after earlier
failures. But in academia, a couple of years spent pursuing a new idea that does
not work out can permanently ruin a young career. So I pursued the two passions
in my life simultaneously, believing that success in industry would help me achieve
success in understanding the brain. I needed the financial resources to pursue the
science I wanted, and I needed to learn how to affect change in the world, how to
sell new ideas, all of which I hoped to get from working in Silicon Valley.
In August 2002 I started a research center, the Redwood Neuroscience Institute
(RNI), dedicated to brain theory. There are many neuroscience centers in the
world, but no others are dedicated to finding an overall theoretical understanding
of the neocortex— the part of the human brain responsible for intelligence. That is
all we study at RNI. In many ways, RNI is like a start-up company. We are
pursuing a dream that some people think is unattainable, but we are lucky to have
a great group of people, and our efforts are starting to bear fruit.
* * *
The agenda for this book is ambitious. It describes a comprehensive theory of how
the brain works. It describes what intelligence is and how your brain creates it.
The theory I present is not a completely new one. Many of the individual ideas you
are about to read have existed in some form or another before, but not together in
a coherent fashion. This should be expected. It is said that "new ideas" are often
old ideas repackaged and reinterpreted. That certainly applies to the theory
proposed here, but packaging and interpretation can make a world of difference,
the difference between a mass of details and a satisfying theory. I hope it strikes
5
评论3