How to Create a Mind
How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed is a non-fiction book about brains, both human and artificial, by the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. First published in hardcover on November 13, 2012 by Viking Press[1] it became a New York Times Best Seller.[2] It has received attention from The Washington Post, The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Author
English
Viking Penguin
2013
United States
352
612.82
QP385.K87
The Singularity Is Nearer (upcoming)
Kurzweil describes a series of thought experiments which suggest to him that the brain contains a hierarchy of pattern recognizers. Based on this he introduces his Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind (PRTM). He says the neocortex contains 300 million very general pattern recognition circuits and argues that they are responsible for most aspects of human thought. He also suggests that the brain is a "recursive probabilistic fractal" whose line of code is represented within the 30-100 million bytes of compressed code in the genome.
Kurzweil then explains that a computer version of this design could be used to create an artificial intelligence more capable than the human brain. It would employ techniques such as hidden Markov models and genetic algorithms, strategies Kurzweil used successfully in his years as a commercial developer of speech recognition software. Artificial brains will require massive computational power, so Kurzweil reviews his law of accelerating returns, which explains how the compounding effects of exponential growth will deliver the necessary hardware in only a few decades.
Critics felt the subtitle of the book, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, overpromises. Some protested that pattern recognition does not explain the "depth and nuance"[3] of mind including elements like emotion and imagination. Others felt Kurzweil's ideas might be right, but they are not original, pointing to existing work as far back as the 1980s. Yet critics admire Kurzweil's "impressive track record"[4] and say that his writing is "refreshingly clear",[5] containing "lucid discussions"[6] of computing history.
Content[edit]
Thought experiments[edit]
Kurzweil opens the book by reminding us of the importance of thought experiments in the development of major theories, including evolution and relativity.[15] It's worth noting that Kurzweil sees Darwin as "a good contender" for the leading scientist of the 19th century.[16] He suggests his own thought experiments related to how the brain thinks and remembers things. For example, he asks the reader to recite the alphabet, but then to recite the alphabet backwards. The difficulty in going backwards suggests "our memories are sequential and in order".[17] Later he asks the reader to visualize someone he has met only once or twice, the difficulty here suggests "there are no images, videos, or sound recordings stored in the brain" only sequences of patterns.[18] Eventually he concludes the brain uses a hierarchy of pattern recognizers.[19]
Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind[edit]
Kurzweil states that the neocortex contains about 300 million very general pattern recognizers, arranged in a hierarchy.[20] For example, to recognize a written word there might be several pattern recognizers for each different letter stroke: diagonal, horizontal, vertical or curved. The output of these recognizers would feed into higher level pattern recognizers, which look for the pattern of strokes which form a letter. Finally a word-level recognizer uses the output of the letter recognizers. All the while signals feed both "forward" and "backward". For example, if a letter is obscured, but the remaining letters strongly indicate a certain word, the word-level recognizer might suggest to the letter-recognizer which letter to look for, and the letter-level would suggest which strokes to look for. Kurzweil also discusses how listening to speech requires similar hierarchical pattern recognizers.[21]
Kurzweil's main thesis is that these hierarchical pattern recognizers are used not just for sensing the world, but for nearly all aspects of thought. For example, Kurzweil says memory recall is based on the same patterns that were used when sensing the world in the first place. Kurzweil says that learning is critical to human intelligence. A computer version of the neocortex would initially be like a new born baby, unable to do much. Only through repeated exposure to patterns would it eventually self-organize and become functional.[22]
Kurzweil writes extensively about neuroanatomy, of both the neocortex and "the old brain".[23] He cites recent evidence that interconnections in the neocortex form a grid structure, which suggests to him a common algorithm across "all neocortical functions".[24]