Comment by devmor
A long history of researching and understanding photosynthesis went into developing and maximizing the efficiency of solar panels. Both produce energy from sunlight.
But they are not the same thing and have meaningfully different uses, even if from a casual observer they appear to serve the same function.
> A long history of researching and understanding photosynthesis went into developing and maximizing the efficiency of solar panels.
I don't think that's accurate. Some of the very first semiconductors were observed to exhibit the photoelectric effect. Nowhere in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Research_in_solar_c... will you find mention of chloroplasts. Optimizing solar cells has mostly been a materials science problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-inspired_computing on the other hand "trace[es] back to 1936 and the first description of an abstract computer" and we have literally dissected, probed, and measured countless neurons in the course of attempting to figure out how they work to replicate them within the computer.