I recently published a post on the question of classifying ‘no input’ or missing data. There was a comprehensive reply by Fergal Byrne in a thread on the Nupic Theory mailing list. I am re-posting it here (below) as it provides a valuable perspective of the discussion in the context of human cortical function. Jan 24th… Read More »A response to “when is missing data a valid state?”
I really enjoyed reading this article Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? published recently in the Guardian. It’s an engaging re-exploration of the contemporary discourse on the classic mind-body dilemma. One view is that the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is an illusion. There is no separation between… Read More »Consciousness and AI
By Gideon Kowadlo, David Rawlinson and Alan Zhang Can you hear silence or see pitch black? Should we classify no input as a valid state or ignore it? To my knowledge, the machine learning and statistics literature mainly regards an absence of input as missing data. There are several ways… Read More »When is missing data a valid state?
TL;DR: An SDR is a Sparse Distributed Representation, described below SDRs are biologically plausible data structures SDRs have powerful properties SDRs have received a lot of attention recently There are a few really great new resources on the topic: Presentation by Subutai Ahmad of Numenta Older introductory presentation by Jeff Hawkins Excellent… Read More »Sparse Distributed Representations (SDRs)
by Gideon Kowadlo and David Rawlinson Introduction One of the keys to understanding the neocortex as a whole, and the emergence of intelligence, is to understand how the cortical hierarchical levels interconnect. This includes: the physical connections, the meaning of the signals being transmitted, and possibly also the way the… Read More »Thalamocortical architecture
by Gideon Kowadlo and David Rawlinson Introduction This article contains some musings on the factors that limit the increase of intelligence as a species. We speculate that ultimately, our level of intelligence is limited by at least two factors, and possibly a third: our own cultural development, physical constraints, and… Read More »Constraints on intelligence
by Gideon Kowadlo and David Rawlinson In a previous post (section ‘Regions’), we discussed the distinction between cortical layers and levels. The literature often describes connections between cortical layers in one level to cortical layers in another level. We are not aware of a written convention for this purpose and propose one… Read More »A notation for intracortical neural connections