Written when I was CEO of Neurala.
At 17 I crashed a motorcycle two weeks after I got it. No broken bones, but the doctor ordered a month in bed. That month chose my career.
With nothing to do but think, I started thinking about how I think. One question would not leave me alone: what if the brain is a machine that takes in data and learns to behave intelligently? And if it is, can we understand how it works?
Thirty years on one question
I went on to study the brain. With many colleagues and friends I wrote equations and code that capture how networks of neurons learn and produce behavior. Later, with two friends in Boston, I started a company to put that work into real devices.
The surprise was how much of intelligent behavior you can describe with mathematics once you understand the building blocks. Neurons are the bricks. Put enough of them together the right way and the building gets interesting.
The mirror
That is the idea I brought to TEDxCortina. For the first time we have machines that can do some of the things we thought only minds could do. I think of them as a mirror. We built it to solve practical problems, and it turns out to show us something about ourselves.
The question I left with the audience is the one I find most interesting. When a machine can perceive, learn and decide, what do people bring that is distinctly ours? Curiosity. Purpose. The reason we ask the question in the first place.
Why I am optimistic
I ended with Dante, as an Italian should: we were made to pursue virtue and knowledge.
My view is that the biggest gift of AI will not be better technology. It will be the time, and the reason, to go back to those questions… the ones I was asking at 17, flat on my back, wondering what to do with a month.
Watch the talk
I keep everything on Physical AI in one place, from papers and patents to 15 years of press: Physical AI.