Jeff Hawkins Forms New Neuroscience Company
Computer industry veterans Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky (founders of Palm Computing and Handspring) today announced they are forming a new company named Numenta. Numenta (which stems from "mentis," the Latin word for "mind") will develop technology derived from Hawkins' research in neuroscience and brain theory.
Hawkins recently published a book on the subject of biological and machine intelligence titled On Intelligence. The book, co-written with science journalist Sandra Blakeslee, has attracted interest in the scientific and computing communities. Numenta is being formed to turn the biological theory described in the book into a useful technology. Numenta's technology is a new type of memory architecture modeled after the mammalian cortex that can solve problems in pattern recognition and machine learning.
"My goal at Numenta is to put my brain theory into practice," said Hawkins. "We have the opportunity to build intelligent memory systems to solve difficult problems in computer science and artificial intelligence for which no other known solutions exist, such as general machine vision, language understanding, and robotics."
Dubinsky, who was formerly co-founder and CEO of Handspring, as well as CEO of Palm Computing, will be Numenta's CEO. "I'm delighted to be working with Jeff again to formulate a business out of his theories," said Dubinsky. "The Numenta vision is large in scope and long term. Although it may take several years before we have commercial products, the possibilities for this technology are exciting and broad."
In addition to Dubinsky, Hawkins is joined by a third founder in Numenta, Dileep George. A PhD candidate at Stanford University, George has worked with Hawkins since 2003 on creating a mathematical extension and software implementation of Hawkins' theory. George now serves as the principal engineer at Numenta.
Hawkins' active role as CTO for palmOne is unchanged. "I remain committed to the ongoing success of palmOne and appreciate palmOne's flexibility in allowing me to simultaneously pursue my other passion."
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RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
It's a no win. When you choose to innovate to share wealth people provide the address to the local mental ward. When you do succeed at creating innovative wealth you’re told you do not deserve any.
Eh what if a bunch of crazy people got together to offer all PDAs more to do? Would that help his research?
That's life choices and consequences.
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
Do they allow "clowns"?
Perhaps with more time i'll wear out my neurons and will have to pay for the service of our healthcare system. While waiting for that day i thoughts i'd try to create some people driven value so those that do not have the choice to pay can have the same quality of care.
How will e-t interact with the healthcare system(s) in the future? Some think by sharing wealth of knowledge (taxes) and offering more choices to plastic cards.
Peace,
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
What r u talking about are u on to something or on something.
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
If you search the Internet you may find some answers.
No, drugs not my choice.
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
Now more than ever, Palm needs a CTO who is TOTALLY FOCUSED on PALM'S products and success. You can bet that Bill Gates and Michael Dell are focused soley on the success of MSFT and DELL. I think this guy Hawkins just doesn't care that much anymore about Palm. He did his thing, made his money, and now he's gone on to other things - which is fine - God bless! But LEAVE THE COMPANY then! Let a CTO come in who is FOCUSED AND ENERGIZED on Palm and not hobbies/other companies.
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
svrontis, ixnay encouragingway Ekkogay otay uybay AlmOnepay ockstay.
PalmOne stock is 26.60 per share from Friday's profit taking low of just under 22.
PalmOne is doing great without Gekko!
Gekko's "direction" would wreck PalmOne.
Eric
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
I doubt that he sleeps, breathes and eats Microsoft all the time.
Your assumption that anyone is a position like this is solely focused on work with no other distractions in life is quite naive. (Or simply bate for an arguemnt.. never sure which with you).
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
Yes, and let's not forget that he buried Goliaths like Phillips, Casio, Toshiba and Sony (in the palmpilot market, that is). God Bless!
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
If the goal is to create a machine that can innovate that's a choice. People still have to agree to use the innovation. There are also people that have some thoughts that need/want more people, until the machine is made to help think of ways to give digital choices more too.
The greatest risk in life is asking people what they want. Why? Well, perhaps for fear the idea will be stolen before build by people who thought of the idea in the first place. With advanced technology the choice exists to share the wealth of knowledge with the creator(s) too.
What is the difference between "Oh that's all I can build that" and "what do you think?" or "How do you see the future of e-com?" Or "Is a PDA a virtual wallet or is some new engineering need/wanted"?
Just some thoughts that have value in an advanced economyies of choices.
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
Jeff is a figurehead simply living off the fat of a once great tech company.
This will DWARF Palm
EVERYONE is going to beat a path to his door. Not just industry -- but *entertainment* too.
Wish I had $$$ in it!
RE: This will DWARF Palm
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: This will DWARF Palm
RE: This will DWARF Palm
Don't believe the hype.
The next "Big Thing" is rarely what you and everyone else thinks it will be.
RE: This will DWARF Palm
RE: This will DWARF Palm
http://www.thomasbass.com/work2.htm
http://www.thomasbass.com/work1.htm
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/5/4/reviews/parunak.html
Geez, Gekko, apparently you have no idea how program trading works! Wall Street has already beaten a path to his door, I'm sure.
RE: This will DWARF Palm
You are right there. Palm caught on by storm in the marketplace with out any big PR at all since they couldn't afford the publicity. Frankly, this is going to die of the founders past success and thinking they are the best. Sigh. It was nice working with you Jeff!
Steve
From practical to the secular sacrifical
While Jeff is calling this "putting brain theory into practice" what we have here my friends is yet another redressing of the Artifical Intelligence market.
However this time, instead of software, he is going to try to pitch non-Von Neuman hardware sans AI languages running on traditional CPUs.
This road has lots and lots of failures based on the false axiom that the mind is a piece of hardware that is exclusively part of the material world.
Thinking and postulating is a counter-entropic event that belongs under the jursidictions of religions and not science. A thought process creates order from disorder -- this totally goes against Entropy within a physical universe. You want to imitate thought and behavior, drop the old Niche, Freud and other "mind is matter" crowd and look into the spiritual world.
My prediction -- you heard it here! -- is this will be good for lots of pop-science articles and a lot of disseration work and maybe a few big ticket sales. However, it won't come to much in the long run.
Expect a slow, slow burn-out on this one. I for one am avoiding anything with this start-up's name connected to it. So long Jeff, it has been nice knowing you. The rest of up will get work done and sell products.
In a way this reminds me of Dave Packard's embrace of the Nazi Master Race theories in the winter of his career -- another psychatric pipe dream!
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
Some choose not to work with outlaws. Innovation takes many people willing to risk their thoughts and reputations. In an advanced economy the source of thoughts is important if we want to avoid the stigma of an outlaw. One thought is not an idea the accumulation of many thoughts is an idea. In advanced economies we can choose to build a prototype to offer more clarity.
Nice to read of people taking risk with their own money after sharing much wealth with others.
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
U R ON SOMETHING
P.S Must be good cause u r way out there...............
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
Almost 20 years "out there" and drug free too.
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
Thinking Machines, Inc.
Carnegie Group
Neuron Data
soon added to this list ...
Numenta
Sigh!
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
GIVE US A BREAK! We are supposed to swallow such twaddle from YOU? You and Gekko make a great team. HE believes that God gave us Dubya, and YOU apparently believe that we are God's Puppets.
Spare me, you imbeciles!
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
For instance, one of the biggest problems faced in the Gulf War was locating mobile Scud launchers. Based on published sources, satellite telemetry didn't prove to be very useful, largely because took a long time to process the data - by the time that targetting information was available, it was too late - the b@st@rd$ had moved the Scud launcher to some other place. If the data analysis process can be computerised, so that data for say thousands of square klicks of terrain can be dealt with in a few seconds, interdiction in 'real time' may become feasible.
I have no idea whether computerised pattern recognition can be made to work and, based on what RhinoSteve says, there seems to be good reason to doubt that it will ever work. However, I'm sure our people in the Pentagon will be very interested in this sort of technology - and, let's face it, they are not shy when it comes to throwing taxpayers' money into R&D.
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
>>belongs under the jursidictions of religions and not science.
>GIVE US A BREAK! We are supposed to swallow such twaddle from YOU?
>You and Gekko make a great team. HE believes that God gave us
>Dubya, and YOU apparently believe that we are God's Puppets.
>
>Spare me, you imbeciles!
The only break you will get is by acknowleding your Maker. Billions have ben waisted and millions killed in concentration camps by those that refused follow a higher power. I have history on my side here and I say this with no apology.
And on the military applications of this, yes it ia massive ... if it works. Target recognition has been a big research subject for decades and in fact was THE problem that spawned the AI research fad.
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
Man created sin. Why? So we can stigmatize innocence people.
The son i think of died for all our sins. The past, present and future is to learn from too.
Choices and consequences. In the end it all comes down to $.
$ is not wrong as long as we do not take the "A" out of agreed.
In the real world outside this box not all value democratic capitalism. In advanced democratic economies we can share the value of thoughts with the creators too so they are not crucified for doing good.
Happy Easter.
E-T
e-tellurian
completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
What you are advocating is a Nichean postulate where ultimately, you are never responsible for any of your actions. That mindset has inductively shown to not work with all of the fascist governments set up since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Physical Science Laws have limited jurisdictions to that of the physical universe. Trying to make any material object "think" is an attempt to overextend the limited jurisdiction of physical science.
Thus, any AI endeavor that doesn't take spiritual elements into consideration is bound to fail. Reading Jeff's book, he makes no tribute to spiritual elements that make the primary elements of thought and behavior, thus he theory is flawed. If he is starting a company based on this, it too will fail if it sticks by its fundamentals.
My guess is they are going to be purists to Jeff's theories 'til the VCs scream for results. Then they will scramble find something else, slap their name on it and claim it as their own.
The hard truth is that many hard core techies and academic types refuse to accept is there is a middle ground of spiritual guidance and free will. Since they themselves do no have any faith in spiritual elements that go beyond the physical universe.
RE: From practical to the secular sacrifical
What effect will this have on the clipboard limit?
Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: What effect will this have on the clipboard limit?
Oh boy! An AI comeback!
Yeehaa!
What goes around, comes around!
So...like...uh...why didn't Hawkins hack graduate school at Stanford (AI University incarnate)?
and...two YEARS til the Next Great Thing outta him at PalmOne?
RE: Oh boy! An AI comeback!
RE: Oh boy! An AI comeback!
RE: Oh boy! An AI comeback! Way-OT now
ASCII images, indeed!
Fun stuff - have I mentioned the LISP interpreter written for Macro11 that had to be translated into UNIX Assembly language? My first C program...
Giggle.
How about...ah...forget it!
RE: Oh boy! An AI comeback!
Hey, what would, say, a Pixar need with a SIGGRAPH today? I recently saw part of "the Incredibles." My God! HAIR!
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Hawkins is stealing his P1 Paycheck
This prick hasn't done a lick of real work at P1 in many years. He's too busy with his hobbies. I bet the prick rarely even shows up at the office. He's sucked enough money out of the company. Shareholders and Customers say - Do some real work or get the f**k off the payroll. Granted, he was the pioneer - but what have you done for me lately? Hawkins fiddles while Palm burns.
http://palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7477