A Thousand Brains

A New Theory of Intelligence

By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword

Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

A best-selling 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 map-like 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Jeff Hawkins (P)2021 Basic Books

Very Insightful Reading

It was a pleasure to listen to this audiobook. Opening my mind to how the brain works and how that impacts us in everything.

Highly recommend this book

Great Read for Intriguing New Ideas

I was hoping to get more coverage of the Thousand Brains theory in the book, but it's still worth a listen.

Fascinating

I usually read/listen to two or three non-fiction books a year and was surprised at how quickly I finished it. It is completely engrossing and enlightening. Like most theoretical physics books and philosophy I do not have the expertise to truly understand or varify the information provided. This books message has that simple instinctive ring of truth that usually soon accompanies common knowledge.

Great until the 3rd part

The discussion on the structure and the functions of the brain were fascinating. I was, however, less interested in the authors musings on how his work should factor into artificial intelligence.

A Thousand Brains

This was a great read that provided many Imintriguing theories. It provided both hope and potential sadness for the future.

The theory is interesting

The second essay/conjecture part is meah. Wish he just stuck to the science and provided more details on machine reproductions

Reference Frames all the way down

Explains the development of the neocortex based on logic evolutionary paths. Explains Vernon Mountcastles replicated cortical columns' ability to model and represent all forms of information used to think, reason, predict and plan. Does not explain consciousness, but I can do that with the building blocks provided.

GroundBreaking

Best up to date analysis of how the brain and intelligence works to provide a model of the world around us.

Very good but very speculative

I wish he had focused more on detailing the mechanics of the neural interactions and of his general theory. I wonder if he had seen chatpgpt-4 before publishing if he would’ve been more enthusiastic about LLMs. This book only spends a few paragraphs on LLMs and I’m not sure that it what it does have to say about them is entirely accurate.

Other than that very informative, but a much longer road to AGI than I suspect we have. He speculates within the next few decades. I think we’re under a decade out in super intelligent general AI. Gpt-4 is more educated and accurate than the average adult human already.

Great listen.

this book should be a must read for all high school and college students. loved it