
IBM creates a research group to test Numenta, a brain-like AI software - jonbaer
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536326/ibm-tests-mobile-computing-pioneers-controversial-brain-algorithms/
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WhitneyLand
My impression is that this headline was made to sound like Numenta is a step
on the way to the singularity, when it fact it's one of many companies working
on machine learning techniques, the key difference being the founders have
good resumes.

Biologically inspired engineering is a great thing, but to say something is a
model of the neocortex in a meaningful way is a claim no one deserves to make
in 2015.

I see a lot of patents for HTM, but have there been any peer reviewed
publications from Numenta?

Jeff Hawkins himself states "HTM does not present any new idea or theory, but
combines existing ideas to mimic the neocortex with a simple design that
provides a large range of capabilities". Ok got it. Nothing wrong with
competing on implementation and engineering.

So regarding that implementation, how are they doing against competitors in
their space?

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lgas
Interesting timing for me, I just stumbled across Clortex[0] which is an
implementation of Hawkins' HTM in Clojure today after watching How To Make a
Brain in Python[1] which may be interesting to anyone that likes this stuff.

[0] [http://fergalbyrne.github.io/](http://fergalbyrne.github.io/)

[1] [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-make-a-human-
brain-i...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-make-a-human-brain-in-
python)

~~~
frik
[https://github.com/nupic-community/clortex](https://github.com/nupic-
community/clortex)

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astrocyte
'On intelligence' is the book that got me started on my journey in pursuit of
AGI. I look forward to seeing the results from this. Video summary :
[http://youtu.be/izO2_mCvFaw](http://youtu.be/izO2_mCvFaw)

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s_q_b
Numenta's based upon the hierarchical temporal memory model described in the
book _On Intelligence_. It's an attempt to replicate the structure of the
neocortex.

Mathematically it appears to be just another neural network. IMHO, deep
learning is probably more likely to give systems approximating general
intelligence.

~~~
31reasons
Can deep learning algorithms learn from temporal data ? So far I have seen
object recognition from a single image but not some intelligence gathering
from a video.

~~~
Houshalter
Yes, they are called recurrent neural networks. The disadvantage is higher
memory and time requirements. You need to store the state of the neural
network at every time step, and then at the end iterate through the whole
process in reverse.

Whereas best I understand it, HTM is online and updates the weights every time
step without needing to keep a running memory of the states it's been in.

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yankoff
It will be very interesting to see their findings. As far as I know Numenta's
software (or HTMs in general) haven't been tested yet against known benchmarks
like LSVRC, CIFAR, etc. Or results haven't been published.

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acjohnson55
I thought I had heard of Numenta. I looked it up and was reminded that it is a
project of Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the PalmPilot.

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MaysonL
original article at [http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ibm-creates-a-
researc...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ibm-creates-a-research-
group-to-test-numenta-a-brain-like-ai-software/)

~~~
danparsonson
Actually that appears to be yet another wrapper around this:
[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536326/ibm-tests-
mobile...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536326/ibm-tests-mobile-
computing-pioneers-controversial-brain-algorithms/)

~~~
dang
Thanks. Url changed to that from [http://www.futurism.co/links/view/ibm-
creates-a-research-gro...](http://www.futurism.co/links/view/ibm-creates-a-
research-group-to-test-numenta-a-brain-like-ai-software/).

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mlmonkey
Even after many years of talk about HTM, I've yet to come across one result
which shows HTM outperforming other ML algorithms on any of the myriad data
sets out there. Isn't it time they showed something? Anything?

