The 20-Watt Brain vs. The Megawatt LLM: Why AI's Information Avalanche Is Failing Human Decision-Making

We live in an age that treats information as a cure-all. If only we knew more, searched harder, or prompted AI better, surely better decisions would follow.

Biju Dominic disagrees.

In a conversation around his new book Micro Stimuli (read an extract), he argues that the human brain was never designed to process endless streams of information. Instead, it evolved to conserve energy, rely on shortcuts, and make sense of the world through compressed meaning. At the heart of that argument is a fascinating idea called exformation—the vast reservoir of knowledge, experience, and shared understanding that sits behind what we actually say. At a time when AI can generate infinite information, Biju suggests that what we leave unsaid can matter more than what we say.

Here are four ideas from the conversation that stayed with us.

4 Key Insights

1. The Energy Efficiency Gulf

The human brain operates entirely on just 20 watts of electricity, whereas AI engines like DeepMind's AlphaGo consume up to 200,000 watts to accomplish specific cognitive tasks like defeating a human Go grandmaster.

2. The Myth of Rational Processing

The human brain processes 11 million bits of data, but only 77 bits operate at a conscious level. To conserve glucose and energy, 99.99% of cognitive processing and 35,000 daily decisions occur non-consciously via cognitive shortcuts (heuristics) every 2 seconds.

3. The Paradox of ‘Exformation’

True persuasion and understanding do not come from the text we consume, but from "exformation"—everything we deliberately leave out of explicit communication because it is already held in our shared contextual background.

4. The Fleeting Smartphone Interface

Modern context duration studies reveal a massive generational shift: while television screens held attention for 5 to 21 minutes, the baseline smartphone interaction lasts just 5 to 10 seconds, with 75% of mobile interactions in 2025 shrinking to less than 1 second.

Why This Matters

We like to imagine ourselves consciously steering our decisions. In reality, much of the work is happening below the surface.

That means effective communication isn't simply about supplying more facts. It's about working with how people actually process information.

The implication is profound: Communication becomes more effective not when we include every piece of information, but when we trust context and distil meaning. In other words, intelligence is often compression.

Biju points to examples such as Gandhi's charkha or the Christian cross. Each condenses pages of philosophy, history and belief into a symbol that can be understood instantly.

The lesson for organisations is obvious: People rarely act on encyclopaedic explanations. They act on distilled meaning.

The next challenge for AI may be: transforming vast amounts of information into “micro-stimuli”—simple, memorable cues that align with how humans actually make decisions.

Dig Deeper

Read an extract on exformation from Biju Dominic’s book MicroStimuli →