I would say that neuroscience is by far the primary input. Of course we need to take shortcuts when appropriate to make software systems performant, which are informed by computer science.
Sure, I think we always try to do this. If an application that we expect to work based upon theory does not work, there is either a problem with the theory or the implementation. This is a normal part of the research cycle.
We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. We are interested in hardware implementations of HTM, but not really working on anything.
I totally agree that this will eventually happen. We are not focusing on it now because HTM models still have a high memory footprint. It would be very difficult to deploy tens of thousands of models in the cloud today.
The internet is a rich playground for HTM systems with sensorimotor functions. Imagine all the ways in which humans traverse the Internet and take actions. It is rich with data and highly actionable. I think one of the first cool apps for sensorimotor functionality would be a kind of web crawler.