Meaning Versus Information, Prediction Versus Memory, and Question Versus Answer
It offers a conceptual perspective for researchers in brain science and AI, but is incremental as it builds on existing ideas without presenting new empirical results.
The essay discusses central concepts in brain science and AI, such as information and memory, to address open questions like system-level brain understanding and deep learning limitations, proposing a different view to advance beyond current knowledge.
Brain science and artificial intelligence have made great progress toward the understanding and engineering of the human mind. The progress has accelerated significantly since the turn of the century thanks to new methods for probing the brain (both structure and function), and rapid development in deep learning research. However, despite these new developments, there are still many open questions, such as how to understand the brain at the system level, and various robustness issues and limitations of deep learning. In this informal essay, I will talk about some of the concepts that are central to brain science and artificial intelligence, such as information and memory, and discuss how a different view on these concepts can help us move forward, beyond current limits of our understanding in these fields.