I took an artificial neutral network class at the university back in 2009. On the exam we were asked to design a (hardware) system to solve a certain complex pr

I took an artificial neutral network class at the university back in 2009. On the exam we were asked to design a (hardware) system to solve a certain complex problem, then present it to the professor. The professor was actually a biologist specialised in neurology who had veered off into ANN without understanding electronics nor programming. I recognised that the problem, while being beyond what an ANN could do at the time, could be split into two parts each of which was a classic ANN task. For communication between the two I described a very simple electronic circuit - just a few logic gates. When presenting the design, the professor questioned why this component was not also a neutral network. Thinking it was a trick question, I happily answered that solving it that way would be stupid since this component was so simple and building and training another network to approximate such a simple logical function is just a waste of time and money. He got really upset, saying that is how he would have done it. He ended up giving me a lower score than expected saying I technically had everything right but he didn't like my attitude.