Aha!

I was reading an article and the author stated he worked for Numenta, so I checked out their website. To my surprise, they are a company developing some open source ai tools similar to neural networks that they call HTM’s.

“NuPIC implements a hierarchical temporal memory system (HTM) patterned after the human neocortex. We expect NuPIC to be used on problems that, generally speaking, involve identifying patterns in complex data. The ultimate applications likely will include vision systems, robotics, data mining and analysis, and failure analysis and prediction.” [Scraped from website]
I tried out their pictures sample and it showed some simple pattern recognition capabilities. The neat thing about the demo is that you could draw you own picture and see how close it matched the pictures that the HTM was trained on. You could then modify the picture to see if it matched more or less than previously.

The company was strarted by Jeff Hawkins who also cofounded Palm and Handspring. Definitely a company to keep an eye on.

“Until recently, a student solving a calculus problem, a physicist modeling a galaxy or a mathematician studying a complex equation had to use powerful computer programs that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. But an open-source tool, called Sage based at the University of Washington won first prize in the scientific software division of Les Trophées du Libre, an international competition for free software.”

Sage website