4.9 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How to Create a Mind | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Create_a_Mind | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T08:50:27.810593+00:00 | kb-cron |
Simson Garfinkel, an entrepreneur and professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School, says Kurzweil's pattern recognition theory of mind (PRTM) is misnamed because of the word "theory", he feels it is not a theory since it cannot be tested. Garfinkel rejects Kurzweil's one-algorithm approach instead saying "the brain is likely to have many more secrets and algorithms than the one Kurzweil describes". Garfinkel caricatures Kurzweil's plan for artificial intelligence as "build something that can learn, then give it stuff to learn", which he thinks is hardly the "secret of human thought" promised by the subtitle of the book. Gary Marcus, a research psychologist and professor at New York University, says only the name PRTM is new. He says the basic theory behind PRTM is "in the spirit of" a model of vision known as the neocognitron, introduced in 1980. He also says PRTM even more strongly resembles Hierarchical Temporal Memory promoted by Jeff Hawkins in recent years. Marcus feels any theory like this needs to be proven with an actual working computer model. And to that end he says that "a whole slew" of machines have been programmed with an approach similar to PRTM, and they have often performed poorly. Colin McGinn, a philosophy professor at the University of Miami, asserted in The New York Review of Books that "pattern recognition pertains to perception specifically, not to all mental activity". While Kurzweil does say "memories are stored as sequences of patterns" McGinn asks about "emotion, imagination, reasoning, willing, intending, calculating, silently talking to oneself, feeling pain and pleasure, itches, and mood" insisting these have nothing to do with pattern recognition. McGinn is also critical of the "homunculus language" Kurzweil uses, the anthropomorphization of anatomical parts like neurons. Kurzweil will write that a neuron "shouts" when it "sees" a pattern, where McGinn would prefer he say a neuron "fires" when it receives certain stimuli. In McGinn's mind only conscious entities can "recognize" anything, a bundle of neurons cannot. Finally he takes objection with Kurzweil's "law" of accelerating change, insisting it is not a law, but just a "fortunate historical fact about the twentieth century". In 2015, Kurzweil's theory was extended to a Pattern Activation/Recognition Theory of Mind with a stochastic model of self-describing neural circuits.
=== Reviews === Garfinkel says Kurzweil is at his best with the thought experiments early in the book, but says the "warmth and humanitarianism" evident in Kurzweil's talks is missing. Marcus applauds Kurzweil for "lucid discussion" of Alan Turing and John von Neumann and was impressed by his descriptions of computer algorithms and the detailed histories of Kurzweil's own companies. Matthew Feeney, assistant editor for Reason, was disappointed in how briefly Kurzweil dealt with the philosophical aspects of the mind-body problem, and the ethical implications of machines which appear to be conscious. He does say Kurzweil's "optimism about an AI-assisted future is contagious." While Drew DeSilver, business reporter at the Seattle Times, says the first half of the book "has all the pizazz and drive of an engineering manual" but says Kurzweil's description of how the Jeopardy! computer champion Watson worked "is eye-opening and refreshingly clear". McGinn says the book is "interesting in places, fairly readable, moderately informative, but wildly overstated." He mocks the book's subtitle by writing "All is revealed!" after paraphrasing Kurzweil's pattern recognition theory of mind. Speaking as a philosopher, McGinn feels that Kurzweil is "way of out of his depth" when discussing Wittgenstein. Matt Ridley, journalist and author, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Kurzweil "has a more impressive track record of predicting technological progress than most" and therefore he feels "it would be foolish, not wise, to bet against the emulation of the human brain in silicon within a couple of decades".
=== Translations === Spanish: "Cómo crear una mente. El secreto del pensamiento humano" (Lola Books, 2013). German: "Das Geheimnis des menschlichen Denkens. Einblicke in das Reverse Engineering des Gehirns" (Lola Books, 2014).
== Notes ==
== References == Kurzweil, Ray (2005), The Singularity is Near, New York: Viking Books, ISBN 978-0-670-03384-3 Kurzweil, Ray (2012), How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, New York: Viking Books, ISBN 978-0-670-02529-9
== External links == Official website After Words interview with Kurzweil on How to Create a Mind, December 1, 2012, C-SPAN "Ray Kurzweil 'How to Create a Mind', Authors at Google" on YouTube Science Friday, Is It Possible to Create a Mind? Archived 2015-09-05 at the Wayback Machine