From a neural networks professor:

https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents...

"However, we should be careful with the metaphors and paradigms commonly introduced when dealing with the nervous system. It seems to be a constant in the history of science that the brain has always been compared to the most complicated contemporary artifact produced by human industry [297]. In ancient times the brain was compared to a pneumatic machine, in the Renaissance to a clockwork, and at the end of the last century to the telephone network. There are some today who consider computers the paradigm par excellence of a nervous system. It is rather paradoxical that when John von Neumann wrote his classical description of future universal computers, he tried to choose terms that would describe computers in terms of brains, not brains in terms of computers."

I have no idea what the submitted MIT article is trying to say. Does the MIT article try to make the point that neural networks can be used for computation given ridiculous amounts of memory? They can, but that still does not explain real intelligence. Otherwise, the article makes the same mistakes as pointed out in the above quote.

To me, the article just ask "Is it possible to simulate living organism features?" and say a small yes by saying "Simulations like these show how computation can produce lifelike behavior across scales".

I'm not expert to judge the result of "drawing a missing hand by using neural network on each pixels"(if it's what it's done? Again not an expert).