David, I passed your message to the Numenta exec staff, and there were all interested in the topic. Here is a message from Jeff Hawkins (who is not a subscriber of this mailing list, so I'm sending in proxy):
============= Wow, this is an interesting post. Thank you for your questions, and thank you for your kind thoughts about Numenta. We think about these issues often and do our best to mitigate risks and to increase the likelihood of reaching a positive outcome from our “experiment”. Here are some thoughts about the issues you mention. Regarding the focus and purity of HTM Our mission is to reverse engineer the neocortex and help start the machine intelligence revolution. We are committed to that agenda. It is possible that other people will take our ideas, have great success, and go in different directions. It is possible the machine learning world will borrow HTM concepts, not realize where they came from, and not understand the importance of brain theory. To some extent, we expect these things to happen. I don’t worry about it too much because I don’t see how it will prevent us from continuing on our mission. And I have faith there are enough people (like you) who understand the importance of brain theory and that machine intelligence is more than deep learning. If we want to keep it “pure” then that is up to us. For our part, Numenta is staying with a biological research agenda and we will continue to spread the word in any way we can. BTW, we have a new marketing director, Christy Maver, who’s primary objective is to increase the public awareness of Numenta, HTM, and our approach to machine intelligence. Regarding attribution I am sure there will be times in the future when we are frustrated by other people using our ideas without attribution, but can we be certain we are not doing the same? We can’t worry about this. We have so many difficult problems yet to solve. Most of the innovation is in front of us. I have learned that if you stay true to your mission the rest of the stuff will take care of itself. On the business/sustainability of Numenta We have a difficult balancing act. On the one hand we are a business and we want to make sure our employees, shareholders, and business partners are all successful. On the other hand we want to be as open as possible to reduce any barriers to advancing HTM theory and machine intelligence. We have chosen to be more open than some businesses but we still have a business model that can meet our business objectives. For example, we have a paid software licensing option for those companies who do not want to use the AGPL version of our software. On the IP side, Donna is in the process of creating a commercial IP license with a philosophy of breadth, i.e. a low cost license to enable many people to exploit the ideas and build products and businesses around them. These strategies are designed to achieve our dual goals of enabling broad research and applications while still creating commercial opportunities. I hope it doesn’t appear that I am dismissing your concerns. We worry about all these issues. But we feel we are doing a reasonable job at managing competing objectives. Thank you again for your questions and for your support of the HTM community. Jeff ============= Regards, --------- Matt Taylor OS Community Flag-Bearer Numenta On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 1:35 AM, cogmission (David Ray) <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > Am I just a small person for being concerned and worried that someone may > grab portions of the technology and integrate it with classic ML techniques > and take credit for HTM theory under some renamed hybrid without > acknowledging origins in Numenta? > > Or the possibility that people will just take it over and possibly steer it > in an "impure" (by "impure" I mean take it in a direction that is not > aligned with Numenta's projected trajectory for enhancement) - leading to > "impure" development (development not a product of heavily considered > correspondence with the biology), and therefore misguiding its future? > > I get concerned that the technology will somehow be "compromised" or > "tainted" or have its momentum siphoned off somehow by people taking bits > and pieces and those "pieces" somehow becoming very popular? > > I wonder how Jeff and all of Numenta remains so open - and I'm searching for > a "context" to hold this process in, so that I have a totally inclusive way > of looking at this choice to be open sourced and transparent. Please help me > understand this choice and how Numenta views this? > > Additionally, I feel that this is an important human social experiment and > an avenue for human social growth too. I have never (to my knowledge) seen a > company be this transparent with its process and products. For that reason, > I feel this project is important on so many levels, and there is so much to > learn above and beyond the obvious pursuit of creating man made intelligence > through reverse engineering the neocortex. > > In short: > I wonder how Numenta sees this process and this wonderful experiment > unfolding? Secondly, I wonder how I should "think" about this process so I > hold it in the right context so that my actions represent this community in > the "right" way (the way that will nurture its progress to its fullest > extent)? > > Cheers, > David > > -- > With kind regards, > > David Ray > Java Solutions Architect > > Cortical.io > Sponsor of: HTM.java > > [email protected] > http://cortical.io
