How to Build A Brain

My previous talk at SIGMOD/PODS happened exactly three decades ago. That was the moment when the world of computation and the field of databases were transformed by the advent of the Internet. It was a change that went beyond mere paradigm. We realized that CS is not about the computer at all --- it is about computation, a sublime scientific phenomenon that permeates the universe. CS became a natural science because the Internet seemed to us as mysterious as the cell, the brain, the universe, and the market, and hence we had to approach it through experiments, falsifiable theories, and new applied math. And, because the Internet is about people in a more intimate way than the computer was, at the same time CS became a social science. A new mode of CS research emerged, often referred to as the lens of computation: since computation underlies everything, when computer scientists look at challenging problems in other sciences, unexpected progress often ensues. CS researchers thought productively about game theory and economics, the quantum universe, phase transitions, biology and evolution, social phenomena and the law, the brain. Finally, nearly two decades after that moment in the 1990s, AI happened, a new powerful intellectual tsunami and irresistible frame of mind. In my talk I will contemplate this fascinating story, connecting its twists and turns with the subject of databases. I will conclude with a snapshot of my work over the past decade on understanding how the brain begets the mind: how the activity of individual neurons and synapses results in cognition, behavior, intelligence, and ultimately language, arguably the crowning achievement of the animal brain.