>>4 You don't get an airplane out of emulating birds. Our brains are fit to do exactly what we need to live and survive, the intelligence is largely nurture(feral children are great example) and the physical substrate is optimized to cost/effect machines don't have.
A calculator is more efficient than me computing the 8th root of 2939.192, calculator ALU is optimized to compute the 8th root much faster than it takes any human to do it.
A truck is more efficient than any human at transporting things. A robot can have much faster reaction time, not limited by biological substrate speed. A camera can see infra-red, ultraviolet. We can record X-rays and neutrons.
A microscope can scan viruses. Machine can detect tiny defects in any materials, even internal defects.
Human cognitive skills are narrow subset tuned for human existence, like a bird is tuned to flight. The neural networks we have are trained for survival, gathering and social interactions for thousands of years. Think its a good idea to replicate them?