Jeff Hawkins: The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence | Lex Fridman Podcast #208

The following is a conversation with Jeff Hawkins, a neuroscientist seeking to understand the structure, function, and the origin of intelligence in the human brain. He previously wrote the 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, uh, think of him saying it in his British accent. Quick mention of our sponsors: Codecademy, Bioptimizers, ExpressVPN, Eight Sleep, 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 would 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 around 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, uh, 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 would 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. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Jeff Hawkins. We previously talked over two years ago. Do you think there's still neurons in your brain that, uh, remember that conversation, that, uh, remember me and got excited? Like, there's a Lex neuron in your brain that just, like, finally has a purpose?