How to Create a Mind

We are capable of hierarchical thinking, of understanding a structure composed of diverse elements arranged in a pattern, representing that arrangement with a symbol, and then using that symbol as an element in a yet more elaborate configuration. (Location 122)

This implies that we are constantly predicting the future and hypothesizing what we will experience. This expectation influences what we actually perceive. Predicting the future is actually the primary reason that we have a brain. (Location 508)

American scientist Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001), who is credited with cofounding the field of artificial intelligence, wrote eloquently about the issue of understanding complex systems at the right level of abstraction. (Location 597)

The neocortex is, therefore, predicting what it expects to encounter. Envisaging the future is one of the primary reasons we have a neocortex. (Location 774)

It is also the case that the beat of music is comparable to our heart rate. (Location 929)

Music beats certainly vary—otherwise music would not keep our interest—but heartbeats vary also. (Location 929)

One important point that applies to both our biological neocortex and attempts to emulate it is that it is difficult to learn too many conceptual levels simultaneously. We can essentially learn one or at most two conceptual levels at a time. Once that learning is relatively stable, we can go on to learn the next level. (Location 969)

This triggers sequences of thoughts that will continue into my dreams. Once I am dreaming, I can think—dream—about solutions to the problem without the burden of the professional restraints I carry during the day. I (Location 1072)

That design compromise kills many women during childbirth and requires a pivoting gait that makes women biomechanically less efficient walkers than men. (Location 1135)

Inputs from the body (estimated at hundreds of megabits per second), (Location 1396)

One region that is associated with pleasure is the nucleus accumbens. In famous experiments conducted in the 1950s, rats that were able to directly stimulate this small region (Location 1498)

(by pushing a lever that activated implanted electrodes) preferred doing so to anything else, including having sex or eating, ultimately exhausting and starving themselves to death. (Location 1499)

A particular genetic mutation of the dopamine-receptor D2 gene causes especially strong feelings of pleasure from initial experiences with addictive substances and behaviors, but as is well known (but not always well heeded), the ability of these substances to produce pleasure on subsequent use gradually declines. (Location 1511)

gradual changes from a trickle of water could carve out great canyons was a powerful metaphor for how a trickle of small evolutionary changes over thousands of generations could carve out great changes in the differentiation of species. (Location 1623)

In order for a digital neocortex to learn a new skill, it will still require many iterations of education, just as a biological neocortex does, but once a single digital neocortex somewhere and at some time learns something, it can share that knowledge with every other digital neocortex without delay. (Location 1759)

This is how I resolve the Western-Eastern divide on consciousness and the physical world. In my view, both perspectives have to be true. (Location 3183)

If I were to ask you what the value of a particular cell was after a trillion trillion iterations, there (Location 3436)

would be no way to answer that question without actually running this machine through that many generations. (Location 3437)

The solution is clearly determined, because this is a very simple deterministic machine, but it is completely unpredictable without actually running the machine. (Location 3437)

British mathematician Irvin J. Good, a colleague of Alan Turing’s, wrote in 1965 that “the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” He defined such a machine as one that could surpass the “intellectual activities of any man however clever” and concluded that “since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion.’” (Location 3975)

The last invention that biological evolution needed to make—the neocortex—is inevitably leading to the last invention that humanity needs to make—truly intelligent machines—and the design of one is inspiring the other. (Location 3979)

In either scenario, waking up the universe, and then intelligently deciding its fate by infusing it with our human intelligence in its nonbiological form, is our destiny. (Location 3999)