Computer scientist and entrepreneur Jeff Hawkins -- best known as the inventor of the Palm Pilot -- has a unified theory of the brain's inner workings and has created algorithms for applying this theory to computer science.
After leaving Handspring, Hawkins founded the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience to study the brain full-time, and he co-authored On Intelligence with Sandra Blakeslee. In 2005, he co-founded Grok, originally known as Numenta, to turn his intelligence research into a marketable product.
A very high-level introduction and review of the work that led to Grok, a new service that will be demonstrated in 2 days at the Amazon re:invent conference.
For those like me that were impressed with the book "On Intelligence" and are fans of the theory behind "Singularity is near", then this feels like another small but major step in the direction of intelligent machines.