Your Neural Network Is Not a Tiny Brain

"Neural network" is one of the great marketing coups of computer science — the name conjures firing synapses and brain-like thought, but the artificial neuron is a distant, oversimplified cousin of the biological one. From spikes vs. plain numbers to a learning algorithm (backpropagation) with no known biological counterpart, the real story isn't that we built a silicon brain. It's that a few crude ideas borrowed from neuroscience turned out to be enough anyway.