system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does the brain process images faster than computers, and if so, why?

I have read that computers can run calculations much faster than the human brain. But then at the same time, it seems as though human/animal brains process images much faster than even the best computers. For instance, with facial recognition. Why is that?
gpt
Computers and brains process information very differently.  Artificial neural networks, though inspired by our (1950s) understanding of the brain, are not a good model of how the brain actually works.  The brain has as many glial cells as neurons, and does as much "work" using chemistry as using electrical/ion channel signaling.

As a result, the performance capabilities of brains and computers are wildly different.  There are only a tiny handful of tasks - facial recognition being one - where the performance of brains and computers can be meaningfully compared.  There is no "why" to this - it's just that in the range of tasks where brains are better and where computers are better, there wind up being a few where they're about the same.

Computers are generally getting better as our hardware and (more importantly) or algorithms improve, while brains are staying the same.  So we should expect, in general, that tasks where brains and computers are close to each other today, to be dominated by computers in the future.