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Numenta is creating a new type of computing technology modeled on the neocortex, the seat of human intelligence. We call this technology Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM. Numenta co-founder Jeff Hawkins first described the outline of this theory in the book On Intelligence.
Computers excel at problems that can be described using discrete rules. However, rules-based approaches struggle with real-world ambiguity and complexity.
An HTM system, by contrast, is trained rather than programmed. HTMs learn about objects in the world in the same way that people do, through a stream of sensory data. By modeling the pattern discovery mechanisms of the human brain, HTMs offer a means to solve pattern recognition and prediction problems in messy, large, real world data sets. Example application areas include image and audio recognition, failure prediction in complex systems, web click prediction, fraud detection, and semantic analysis of text. The underlying learning algorithms used in HTMs are not specific to particular sensory domains and thus can be applied to a broad set of problems that involve modeling complex sensory data.
Numenta provides a development platform called NuPIC (Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing). NuPIC allows programmers to create and test HTMs on their own problems with their own data sets. NuPIC can be downloaded and used without cost for experimentation.
At the heart of NuPIC are learning algorithms that discover the temporal structure in a stream of data. We released prototype learning algorithms in 2007. Numenta is currently developing a next generation of these learning algorithms which represent a radical improvement in performance and biological realism. We expect to release these new algorithms along with a major update to NuPIC sometime in 2011.
The founders of Numenta believe biological principles will drive the next generation of intelligent computing. Numenta aims to be a catalyst for this next generation of computing by creating a new technology along with a flexible application development platform.
