Your Brain’s Algorithm for Learning Anything
You already have all the pieces for artificial intelligence
I. Overview
In the tech community, artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning is all the rage. It’s coming to the forefront with ask anything apps like Facebook M and self-driving cars like Tesla’s Model S, even with app development like Gigster.
And there are really 3 pieces to any successful application:
- Hardware: in tech terms, it needs a highly performant and low power GPU that can handle the always-on, always-being-fed workflows.
- Software: you need a robust neural network that can take inputs, do something with them, and give the output to the next “neuron” in the chain, and on and on until a fuzzy image can be transformed into the word “cat”.
- Data: you need data. Lots and lots of data. The more different types of data you have, the higher the probability of success. To get something like five 9s of confidence (99.999% reliability of success in the outcome) you need a trillion points of data. That is not a small amount.
And so how do you take these concepts from the most cutting edge data science, software development, and applications for the 21st century, and apply them to your everyday life?
II. Analysis
First you have to realize that these concepts weren’t just pulled out of thin air, but rather they were thought experiments that began by diseccting the human brain and connectome.
And second, you need each of the same three things to learn something and become the best in the world at it:
- Hardware: the beauty is you don’t have to do anything here, since you come standard with this cool thing called a brain. All you need to do is make sure you keep it powered and running well (i.e., food, sleep, exercise).
- Software: again, you’re lucky in that millions of years of evolution have made your brain a problem-solving and learning machine. So you really don’t have to do anything here, except exercise it by, what else, thinking.
- Data: of course, you weren’t going to get away with it this easy, by doing nothing. You have to feed your brain data, trillions and trillions of pieces of data that began when you were first born. Lights, sounds, tastes, smells. Each of those senses are an input mechanism for you to learn. If you’re reading this, then you learned one of the most insane things ever. To recognize a bunch of shapes put together in weird, random patterns, and from that take information.
But here’s the wild part. If you really want to learn something, and become really good at it, you need to keep feeding your brain very specific kinds of data. I just realized this morning that I had been doing this for years. I parse through about 600-ish blog posts every day. I read hundreds of emails every day. I read scientific papers, news stories, modern thinking, physics. I give my brain a lot of product, tech, software, design, and business related data every day. But I also give it lots of movies and real-world experiences and interactions with people all over the world, in order to keep rewiring my neural network algorithm so new, different kinds of data leads to new and different kinds of output.
And what happens when you get different kind of output?
Innovation.
III. Connecting The Dots
You connect two previously unconnected things, because something in the diving community spurred an insight in a software development or business model approach. And that one insight that came from 10 years of feeding your brain data and experiences is more valuable than anything that came before it.
All you need to do is keep reading, experiencing, and trying to connect different things together in novel ways and eventually you will create a valuable insight.
Of course, that’s the easy part. The hard part then becomes communicating that insight in a compelling way to the rest of the world.
Like AirBnB to sell your couch space for the evening, most people will think you’re insane, silly, or are off your rocker because nobody has ever thought of that before. And then you can choose to give up. Or you can choose to fight, compel and as Steve says, “push the human race forward”.
So there’s your monday wisdom. Eat, sleep, read, interact, and above all, use it to think and connect. Then talk to people about it.
You might be surprised what you manifest.
— Sean
