A new way to move artificial intelligence forward

The artificial intelligence or "AI" label is slapped on almost anything electronic these days, from "smart" toothbrushes to cancer-curing supercomputers. If you're like me you've become jaded by the AI rubric, realizing we're still a long way from true intelligence in machines. Jeff Hawkins is co-founder of machine intelligence company Numenta and author of a new book "A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence" that offers a theory of what's missing in current AI. I don't normally do author interviews, but Jeff has a history of knowing where things are going in tech, including, in my opinion, being a primary developer of the modern smartphone at Handspring and Palm. Hawkins' book takes pains to explain how the neocortex -- the large, convoluted outer layer of the human brain -- uses "reference frames" of perception, thousands of which create our understanding of everything from the shape of a simple object to the nature of a complex concept like mathematics.