[colllectorof]

> People like Geoff Hinton spend most of their time thinking about how the brain works (indeed, his background is cognitive psychology).

If that was as significant a factor as you make it sound, the progress in artificial neural networks would be closely tied to the progress of neurology. So where are all the citations of neurology and cognitive psychology papers in recent AI/ANN research?

[nl]

Because we are so far off being able to simulate biological systems it is easier to do other things.

There is some work in this though, but often going the other way: see for example http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/brain-dish-flies-pla... and even more extreme http://www.nature.com/articles/srep11869