For people wanting to look into HTM (Hierarchical Temporal Memory), do check out Numenta's main website [1], in particular the papers [2] and videos [3] sections.

Otherwise, HTM inventor Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence" is one of the top 3 or so most fascinating books I've ever read. It doesn't cover HTM though, just how the brain works at a conceptual level, but in a way I haven't seen anyone else explain. Jeff clearly has an ability to see the forest through the trees in a way that is not too commonly found. This is one of the reasons I think HTM might be on to something, although it of course has to prove itself in real life too.

But we should remember for how long classic Neural Networks was NOT overly successful, and almost dismissed by a lot of people (including my university teacher who was rather skeptical about them, when I took an ML course on like 12 years ago and personally believed a lot in them). We had to "wait" for years and years until enough people were eventually throwing enough work on finding out how to make them really shine.

[1] https://numenta.org/

[2] https://numenta.com/neuroscience-research/research-publicati...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialNumenta

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-I...

Edit: Fixed book link.

I'm curious how close the research community is to general AI

Nobody knows, because we don't know how to do it yet. There could be a "big breakthrough" tomorrow that more or less finishes it out, or it could take 100 years, or - worst case - Penrose turns out to be right and it's not possible at all.

Also, are there useful books, courses or papers that go into general AI research?

Of course there are. See:

https://agi.mit.edu

https://agi.reddit.com

http://www.agi-society.org/

https://opencog.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part...

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part...

https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-General-Intelligence-Cogni...

https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Alg...

https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0...

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-I...

https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...

https://www.amazon.com/Unified-Theories-Cognition-William-Le...

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning-Ma...

https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Bio...

https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-Artificia...

https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Universe-Oxford-Cognitive-Ar...

See also, the work on various "Cognitive Architectures", including SOAR, ACT-R, CLARION, etc,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_architecture

"Neuvoevolution"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroevolution

and "Biologically Inspired Computing"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologically_inspired_computin...

I suggest you read this book “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins on similar topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-I...

Sources: 1. On Intelligence: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507... 2. https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-have-a-150-IQ-Is-life... 3. Some article shared in the MENSA group years ago I'd have to dig in to find.

You should read the book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. Pay attention to Chapter 6, "How the cortex works". Our "consciousness" is derived of the same stuff in all animals, we just have more cortical layers. We also have fuzzy algorithms which allow the brain to recognize patterns, and associate x with y.

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

I think to postulate that there's a yet undiscovered subatomic elementary particle that gives rise to consciousness is hogwash. "Consciousness" or awareness of self has been shown in other animals. Humans are distinct in their ability to couple self-awareness and toolmaking.

There is no "human energy" it's the same material as in all other animals, we just have more of it. The "human energy" could be classified as distinct fuzzy algorithms found in humans which aid pattern recognition.

There's nothing about the idea of physical consciousness that says it has to be a continuum -- there could just be some critical mass or qualitative attribute of brains that puts us "over the threshold", so to speak. Nobody can give any kind of a definitive answer. For ideas about a "continuum" of consciousness, you might read Phi:

http://www.amazon.com/Phi-A-Voyage-Brain-Soul-ebook/dp/B0078...

Or for other views, you might check out V.S Ramachandran (neuroscience): http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Human-Consciousness-Imposto...

Jeff Hawkins (computer science): http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Hofstadter (mathematics, cognitive science): http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/...

Those are some of my favorite popular-press books on the subject.

If you're interested, you should read On Intelligence[1] by Jeff Hawkins (inventor of the Palm Pilot). In it, Hawkins presents a compelling theory of how the human brain works and how we can finally build intelligent machines. In fact, Andrew Ng's Deep Learning research is built on Hawkin's "one algorithm" hypothesis.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Memory is a funny thing. You don't recall a snap shot of all the details at once. You start telling a story and during the playback of the memories you'll be able to recall deep details.

Reading On Intelligence really solidified my thoughts on how memory (probably) works.

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Actually, there's a growing amount of evidence that there's a single, general-purpose algorithm in the human brain that gives rise to intelligence. For one, there's the fact that every part of the brain looks and behaves the same. There's also the fact that the brain is very plastic in what it learns – the auditory cortex can learn to "see" if we were to rewire the signals from the eyes from the visual cortex to the auditory cortex. It's very unlikely that our brain is hard-wired to recognize faces, for instance, but rather that it learns to do so using this generic learning algorithm.

I urge you to watch Andrew Ng's talk that I linked to in the post, and read On Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...) by Jeff Hawkins, a book that totally changed the way I look at intelligent behavior.

There is a very quick reference to the person who inspired him, Jeff Hawkins, whose book is worth a read:

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Edit: update link