Numenta Launches Thousand Brains Project, Offering Open-Source Framework for a New AI Approach

Numenta Inc. is set to make a profound impact on the field of artificial intelligence with the launch of the Thousand Brains Project, aimed at pioneering a new era of brain-based AI that addresses the limitations of deep learning today. After several years of internal work on the project, Numenta is releasing an open-source implementation of a sensorimotor learning framework based on the principles of the neocortex outlined in the Thousand Brains Theory.

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Continuing its long tradition of sharing research and open-source code and building a community around its algorithms, Numenta is returning to this practice with the Thousand Brains Project and calling for researchers worldwide to follow or join this exciting initiative.

“The human brain is the best example we have of an intelligent system. Over the past decades, we have made significant progress in understanding how this sensorimotor system creates intelligence. Now, we are taking these lessons to build AI systems based on the same sensorimotor principles — systems that can interact with the world, test new knowledge, learn continuously and operate with minimal energy — and we’re inviting researchers and developers to join us,” said Jeff Hawkins, co-founder of Numenta and author of A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence.

Viviane Clay, director of the Thousand Brains Project, added, “After years of working on creating sensorimotor AI, we are excited to move our work to an open-source project. By making our code, documentation, IP, and other assets public, we are encouraging people to join us. We’re confident that sensorimotor learning will be core to AI and want to foster an active research community and exchange around this innovative approach to AI.”

A New, Open-Source AI Framework

The new sensorimotor learning framework is available on GitHub. Researchers and developers will be able to test the early research code and engineer it to fit their sensorimotor applications. They can also run Numenta’s existing experiments and peruse tutorials to understand and compare the company’s novel approach to existing approaches.

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Interested parties can learn more about why to contribute and become open-source community members, post questions and ideas on Discourse, watch meeting recordings on YouTube, and read or contribute to the documentation. They can also actively improve Numenta’s algorithms and implementation by contributing ideas on the forum or code on GitHub. By using the permissive MIT license, Numenta is encouraging others to use this approach in any way people like, whether in academic research or for commercial applications.

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