How Computationally Complex Is a Single Neuron?

Our mushy brains seem a far cry from the solid silicon chips in computer processors, but scientists have a long history of comparing the two. As Alan Turing put it in 1952: "We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge." Today, the most powerful artificial intelligence systems employ a type of machine learning called deep learning. Their algorithms learn by processing massive amounts of data through hidden layers of interconnected nodes, referred to as deep neural networks. As their name suggests, deep neural networks were inspired by the real neural networks in the brain, with the nodes modeled after real neurons -- or, at least, after what neuroscientists knew about neurons back in the 1950s, when an influential neuron model called the perceptron was born.