Subutai Ahmad

Welcome!

I'm Subutai, a researcher focused on understanding how brains work — and using those concepts to make AI better.

I spend much of my time thinking about the neocortex: how it learns, why it's so efficient, and what we might borrow from it to build better machine intelligence. I'm currently Chief Scientist at Numenta and one of the initiators of the Thousand Brains Project. This web page is a collection of notes on my research — and a bit about me.
NOTE: still a work in progress - you'll see many incomplete sections.

Subutai Ahmad

Origin story

How I got here

I taught myself to program at age eleven on a TRS-80. No courses, no YouTube — just the manual, a lot of trial and error, and a growing suspicion that this machine and I were going to get along.

I studied Computer Science at Cornell University. Thanks to a couple of cognitive psychology electives I became fascinated with how the brain actually works. As a computer scientist I felt the only way to really understand something is to create the program, and there couldn't be a more interesting program to write!

That led me to a Masters and PhD in machine learning and computational neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with my PhD research carried out at UC Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute.

My Masters advisor was Gerald Tesauro (of TD-Gammon fame); my PhD advisor was Steve Omohundro. Both shaped how I think about learning — rigorously and with a focus on fundamentals.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my wife and our now-grown kids. The TRS-80 is long gone, but the spirit is very much still here.

High-school senior yearbook photo — Subutai with his TRS-80

High school yearbook photo. Made the old-fashioned way with my friend Moe: two negatives developed together in a darkroom.

What I work on

Research themes

Six threads that have occupied most of my career. The first three are current focuses; the rest is earlier work I still care a lot about. Each opens its own page.

Earlier work

Where I've worked

Career journey

The full career journey →

Out in the world

Talks, podcasts & press

A few places I've turned up — interviews, podcasts, talks, and articles.

The rest of me

Interests, influences & philosophy

✏ Draft

Things that fascinate me

  • The neocortex — still the most impressive learning machine we know of.
  • The history of connectionism and AI: watching a "fringe" idea slowly take over the world.
  • The intuitions behind elegant real world mathematics (beyond the equations).
  • The challenges of commercializing deep technology.

People who shaped how I think

  • Jeff Hawkins — for relentless commitment to neuroscience and relentless focus on the true goal.
  • Donna Dubinsky — for the human side of building companies and the patience to let great technology grow.
  • Gerald Tesauro & Steve Omohundro — for teaching me to think rigorously.

A few things I believe (roughly)

  • The brain isn't magic — it's understandable.
  • Most interesting problems sit at the border between fields.

Research over the years

Publications timeline

Each bubble is a year — size ≈ number of papers, color = research area. The axis leans into the recent past: the last few years get the most room, and earlier decades compress toward the left. Tap or click a bubble (or a legend area) to filter the list below.