This essay seems to ignore the concept of "neural networks" (NN), both biological and artificial. Now, that doesn't mean that our current artificial representa

This essay seems to ignore the concept of "neural networks" (NN), both biological and artificial. Now, that doesn't mean that our current artificial representations of neural networks are anywhere close to how biological neural networks work (for instance, as far as I know, we have yet to find anything like "backpropagation" in biological NNs - but if anyone knows differently, I'd be most interested in learning). But artificial NNs are the closest we've gotten to something that seems to work how brains (biological NNs) work, and how they are structured. We have a multitude (and seemingly ever growing) of models, but there is something lacking - something almost seemingly fundamental. For instance, we have all of these different models, but none of them are "general" in the sense that there is a single one that can be used for different tasks. Not only that, but there are also a multitude of means for simulating the stimulus/activity/firing of the neurons in the network; for a while the "activation function" was a sigmoid filter, but today best results are found with RELU - then there's the whole concept of "spiking" networks which don't work like such (they seem somewhat "time dependent" from my understanding). There are tons more where those came from. Now - in this field I don't have much knowledge; I'm no where near an expert, and I am certain it shows. At the same time, based on what I do know, I have this feeling in the back of my head that while what we have built does seem to work ok on certain classes of problems, it isn't the answer. I think what we've built is overly complex; I think there is an answer out there much simpler. It may be something that needs new hardware. I don't think it will involve GPUs or any other linear algebra methodology (hardware or software). It might likely be one of those "forehead slappers" when we do discover it, whatever it may be. It's a nagging feeling I have - maybe completely wrong. It just feels like we are in a certain manner trying to build an airplane that flaps its wings to fly, when the answer is ultimately much simpler. Maybe my feelings are false.