The human brain has 80 billion neurons and a 100 trillion synapses. I think you're underselling the processing power of that warm chunk of meat.

The real message of the last 15 years has actually been the opposite: if you throw enough processing power at it, intelligence emerges.

Moreover we've known for quite a while now that glial cells also participate in cognition and moderate learning (e.g.: [1]). When you take those connections into account the numbers get really staggering. 85 billion glial cells with trillions of protein channels facilitating communication between the glial syncytium [2].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S193459091... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5063692/