Jeff Hawkins | |
|---|---|
 Hawkins at eTech 2007 | |
| Born | Jeffrey Hawk (1957-06-01)June 1, 1957 (age 68) Huntington, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation(s) | Businessperson, computer scientist, neuroscientist, engineer |
| Known for | Co-founder ofPalm andHandspring |
Jeffrey Hawkins is an American businessman,computer scientist,neuroscientist and engineer. He co-foundedPalm Computing — where he co-created thePalmPilot andTreo — andHandspring.[1][2]
He subsequently turned to work on neuroscience, founding in 2002 theRedwood Neuroscience Institute.[3] In 2005 he co-founded Numenta, where he leads a team in efforts to reverse-engineer the neocortex and enable machine intelligence technology based on brain theory.[4]
He is the co-author ofOn Intelligence (2004), which explains hismemory-prediction framework theory of the brain, and the author ofA Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (2021).
Hawkins attendedCornell University, where he received aBachelor of Science with a major in electrical engineering in 1979.[5][6]
His interest inpattern recognition for speech and text input to computers led him to enroll in thebiophysics program at theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1986. While there he patented a "pattern classifier" for handwritten text, but his PhD proposal on developing a theory of the neocortex was rejected.
Hawkins joinedGRiD Systems in 1982, where he developedrapid application development (RAD) software calledGRiDtask.[7] As vice president of research from 1988 to 1992, he developed theirpen-based computing initiative that in 1989 spawned theGridPad, one of the firsttablet computers.[8]
Hawkins foundedPalm Inc., in January 1992. In 1998 he left the company along with Palm co-foundersDonna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan to startHandspring.[9][10][2]
In March 2005, Hawkins, together with Dubinsky (Palm's original CEO) andDileep George, founded Numenta, Inc.[11]
In 2002, after two decades of finding little interest from neuroscience institutions that he did not have a stake in, Hawkins founded theRedwood Neuroscience Institute inMenlo Park, California.
In 2004, he co-authoredOn Intelligence withSandra Blakeslee, laying out a theory on his "memory-prediction framework" of how the brain works.[11]
One of Hawkins' areas of interest iscortical columns. In 2016, he hypothesized that cortical columns did not capture just a sensation, but also the relative location of that sensation, in three dimensions rather than two (situated capture), in relation to what was around it. Hawkins explains, "When the brain builds a model of the world, everything has a location relative to everything else".[12]
In 2021, he publishedA Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, a framework for intelligence and cortical computation.[13] The book details the advances he and the Numenta team made in the development of their theory of how the brain understands the world and what it means to be intelligent. It also details how the "thousand brains" theory can affect machine intelligence, and how an understanding of the brain impacts the threats and opportunities facing humanity.[14] It also offers a theory of what's missing in current AI.[15]
In 2003, Hawkins was elected as a member of theNational Academy of Engineering "for the creation of the hand-held computing paradigm and the creation of the first commercially successful example of a hand-held computing device." He also served on the Advisory Board of theSecular Coalition for America where he has advised on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.[16]
