My name's John Blackburn from the National Physical Laboratory in London -- the same place where Alan Turing worked in the 1940s. I've always been interested in AI and was fascinated by Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence. I have also seen many of his videos which are really inspirational. But mostly I work as a theoretical physicist so machine learning is a bit of a sideline. However, I think it's something NPL must (and will) embrace more in future. I'm interested in HTM due to it's biological plausibility and potential to create really intelligent robotic animals. I'd love to see a fully functional robot mouse, but we are still decades away from this
I'm currently working on a project to use NuPIC to predict data (strain and temperature) that was measured over a three year period from a concrete bridge. I'm trying to get anomaly detection results as well. You may have seen some posts from my summer students, Cavan and Naomi. They've left now so it's just me continuing the fight to get sensible results. The same bridge data has already been modelled using another neural net system called Echo State Networks (ESN). My initial conclusion is that ESN is much more effective at solving the narrow problem of anomaly detection for the bridge and much simpler to use. For straightforward time sequence predictions, I think HTM is a sledgehammer to crack a wallnut. But that's ok, because it has the ability to help solve a much more important problem: that of AGI. However, I don't think we'll see anything truly impressive till we add the sensory motor loop. And I think embodiment is essential for intelligence: we need robots in the physical world, only then will we see behaviours that we recognise as intelligent. Eventually I want to see a child robot growing up, exploring the world, learning to talk and having memories and personality just like a human. This is the only way a neural net will ever learn to speak a human language IMO. On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 5:21 PM, Anubhav Chaturvedi < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi NuPIC, > > I am a final year Computer Science undergraduate student. I have always > loved breaking and making things and computers just gave me all the freedom > to explore. I am more interested in knowing about how things work and how > can I apply my learning to make life easier, specially if it is > interdisciplinary. Apart from computers I am interested in Biology, > Physics, Neuroscience and Photography. I got interested in NuPIC late last > year after I came across Jeff Hawkins' Ted Talk and Chetan Surpur's videos. > It has been a lovely journey since then. > > I am new to opensource but it is surprising how cool and encouraging the > NuPIC community is and it has set a very high standard for opensource > communities in my mind. Thanks NuPIC. > > *Regards,* > *Anubhav Chaturvedi* > > *Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani* > KK Birla Goa Campus > > > On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 8:24 PM, Matthew Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hello NuPIC, >> >> Thanks for your patience during this very annoying mailing list >> situation. It seems that the dust has settled after migrating to our >> own virtual private server, and the lists are back to 100% >> functionality. >> >> ... But that's not good enough for me! I think we should STRESS-TEST >> our mailing lists' new home. So here is the plan: I've sent this >> message to each of our four mailing lists. Please reply to this >> message with a short SELF-INTRODUCTION! I'm especially interested in >> hearing from LURKERs who've been reading the lists but never posted. >> Let us know you exist, even if it's just a short "hello world!". If >> you are an established poster that everyone knows, perhaps you should >> share something interesting or unique about yourself that no one on >> the list knows. >> >> Here's mine: >> >> I spent over four years in the US Air Force working as an intelligence >> analyst. I worked to support the B-2 Stealth program, and I trained >> pilots about air defense systems, so I know a lot about surface-to-air >> missiles. After leaving the Air Force, I worked as a defense >> contractor, where I really got into programming mostly in fortran77 >> and shell scripts. I had to convince my coworkers to use Java!! Can >> you believe that? Anyway, I realized I wanted to dedicate my career to >> software development instead of supporting combat operations, so I >> left to build code, and I ended up here at Numenta. >> >> Your turn! >> >> --------- >> Matt Taylor >> OS Community Flag-Bearer >> Numenta >> >> >
