I know that there are various strategies for picking pseudo random numbers, but what I mean by determinism is that as far as we can tell, the activation trigger

I know that there are various strategies for picking pseudo random numbers, but what I mean by determinism is that as far as we can tell, the activation trigger for a neuron is highly dependent on outside signals like hormones. That means that a biological “dot product” will be different if you are tired vs. well rested. A dot product run on Intel CPUs are intended to always be the same no matter what. The heat signature stuff isn’t changing the way circuits do math. As to optical illusions, the point I was making was that “the way humans practically perceive something” is not a sufficient way to measure the similarness of two things, since our perceptions are so often tricked (LLMs are literally trained specifically to trick you into thinking you’re talking to sentience). I also don’t think they are completely unrelated at all. As I said I know we designed one to be like the other. It’s just by no means “the same.” AI may one day do convergent evolution toward how brains think, but it’s still important to recognize that’s convergent evolution.