Business 2.0 finally got around to posting the Numenta article that appeared in their dead-tree version a couple weeks ago. Read the article and ponder the implications...
Numenta is developing a new computer memory system that it says can remember the patterns of the world presented to it and use them, the way a human does, to make analogies and draw conclusions. If it works as Hawkins expects, the applications and business opportunities will be stunning. They could range from the mundane - helping radiologists or airport security officers to read X-ray images, predicting machine failures in factories, improving manufacturing yields at chip plants - to the mind-boggling: predicting tornadoes and stock prices, making smart cars, unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos. "I know this has to work because this is how the brain does it," Hawkins says.
On a tangentially related note, check out Richard A. Clarke's Breakpoint if you're looking for an entertaining and thought-provoking near-term sci fi version of how some of these sometimes seemingly disparate threads may come together.
Source: Jeff Hawkins hacks the human brain - February 1, 2007
