> can be more efficient at narrowly defined tasks

My point was in narrowly defined task of turning chemical energy to motion, a Jet engine is less efficient than muscle fibers if you use ATP as the point of comparison. Biology got really efficient at that very narrowly defined task.

> Evolution has never had the goal 'evolve human consciousness as quickly and efficiently as possible'

Evolving as efficiently as possible isn’t the goal. But turn an egg into human consciousness as efficiently as possible is definitely a goal, of course it gets to leverage everything else the brain needs to be doing rather than starting from scratch here.