The mind behind Numenta, Jeff Hawkins, has a long record of inventions, including the first successful handheld computer, the PalmPilot, and the first successful smartphone, the Handspring Treo.
But for more than two decades his real passion has been figuring out how the cerebral cortex works and applying that knowledge to computers. Hawkins hopes to produce a software toolkit for product developers next year that will allow them to mimic the way humans process visual imagery.
Microchips designed by Audience, the Silicon Valley company that Lloyd Watts launched, are now being used by mobile handset makers in Asia to improve dramatically the quality of conversations in noisy places. The 47-year-old neuroscientist Watts is on the leading edge of what some believe will be a fundamental shift in the way certain types of computers are designed. Now, thanks to advances in our understanding of biology, scientists believe they can model a new generation of computers on how the brain actually works--the microscopic chemical interactions and electrical impulses that translate sensations into knowledge and knowledge into decisions and actions.
In the most ambitious efforts along this track, IBM is soon to announce a $4.9 million grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for research into creating intelligent computers. The money funds the first phase of a multiyear effort to engineer computing systems that simulate the brain's activities while rivaling its compact size. The government says it will use the results to design battlefield monitoring systems that detect threats and warn troops. DARPA was the lead agency that developed the Internet some years ago.
Source: BusinessWeek, December 1, 2008