#208 – Jeff Hawkins: The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Jeff Hawkins, a neuroscientist seeking to understand the structure, function and origin of intelligence in the human brain. He previously wrote a seminal book on the subject titled On Intelligence, and recently, a new book called A Thousand Brains, which presents a new theory of intelligence that Richard Dawkins, for example, has been raving about, calling the book, quote, brilliant and exhilarating. I can't read those two words and not think of him saying it in his British accent. Quick mention of our sponsors, Codecademy, BiOptimizers, ExpressVPN, Asleep and Blinkist. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that one small but powerful idea that Jeff Hawkins mentions in his new book is that if human civilization were to destroy itself, all of knowledge, all our creations will go with us. He proposes that we should think about how to save that knowledge in a way that long outlives us, whether that's on Earth, in orbit or on Earth, or in deep space, and then to send messages that advertise this backup of human knowledge to other intelligent alien civilizations. The main message of this advertisement is not that we are here, but that we were once here. This little difference somehow was deeply humbling to me, that we may with some non-zero likelihood destroy ourselves, and that an alien civilization, thousands or millions of years from now, may come across this knowledge store, and they would only with some low probability even notice it, not to mention be able to interpret it. And the deeper question here for me is what information in all of human knowledge is even essential? Does Wikipedia capture it or not at all? This thought experiment forces me to wonder what are the things we've accomplished and are hoping to still accomplish that will outlive us. Is it things like complex buildings, bridges, cars, rockets? Is it ideas like science, physics and mathematics? Is it music and art? Is it computers, computational systems, or even artificial intelligence systems? I personally can't imagine that aliens wouldn't already have all of these things. In fact, much more and much better. To me, the only unique thing we may have is consciousness itself, and the actual subjective experience of suffering, of happiness, of hatred, of love. If we can record these experiences in the highest resolution directly from the human brain, such that aliens will be able to replay them, that is what we should store and send as a message. Not Wikipedia, but the extremes of conscious experiences, the most important of which, of course, is love. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now. I try to make these interesting, but I give you timestamps, so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It is actually the best way to support this podcast. I'm very fortunate to be able to be picky with the sponsors we take on. We have way more sponsors than we can take on. So we only take on the good ones. So hopefully if you buy their stuff, you'll find value in it just as I have. This show is brought to you by a new amazing sponsor called Codecademy. It's a website I highly recommend you go to if you want to learn to code. It doesn't matter if you're totally new or somewhat experienced, there's a course there for you. If you haven't programmed before and are curious how to dive in, I would highly recommend you sign up and take their Learn Python 3 course. They say it takes 25 hours to complete, but it is so clear, it is accessible. I would say it's even fun that that time is going to just fly by. They're very selective with the kind of content they present to you, and they focus on the most important basics. Honestly, if you want to learn to program, I think Python is the right program and language to start with. And if you want to learn Python, I think you should use Codecademy. Their Learn Python 3 course, I highly recommend. Anyway, get 15% off your Codecademy Pro membership when you go to codecademy.com and use promo code Lex. By the way, that's spelled Codecademy. It's not Code Academy. There's no A, it's C-O-D-E-C-A-D-E-M-Y, Codecademy. That's promo code Lex at codecademy.com. And you get 15% off of their pro membership. The next sponsor, also a new one, is BiOptimizers.
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