To help improve the framing a little more, with rough orders of magnitude:
* 10^10 Watts: electrical power generation of the Itaipu Dam[0]
* 10^26 Watts: luminosity of the Sun[0]
* 10^10 neurons simulated on the Japanese supercomputer K last year[1]
* 10^10 neurons in the human brain[2]
I'm not claiming that a simulation of the human brain with equivalent capability is just around the corner, just that it is misleading to point to the scale difference between artificial and natural energy sources with the implication that brain simulation is beyond our reach in the same way.
* 10^10 Watts: electrical power generation of the Itaipu Dam[0]
* 10^26 Watts: luminosity of the Sun[0]
* 10^10 neurons simulated on the Japanese supercomputer K last year[1]
* 10^10 neurons in the human brain[2]
I'm not claiming that a simulation of the human brain with equivalent capability is just around the corner, just that it is misleading to point to the scale difference between artificial and natural energy sources with the implication that brain simulation is beyond our reach in the same way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28power%2...
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fninf.2020.0001...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...