Pieces like this remind me that even professors need to sell what they do, like saying "Humans cannot really understand them." in this case. Never have we ever had more simulation tools and compute power like we have today and we can't understand how these chips really work?
I think this is an example of mystifying-for-marketing as used in academia, like portraying this research as some breakthrough at a level that exceeds human understanding. IMHO practitioners of science should be expected to do better than this.
It's not necessarily the professor really saying that. Journalists (and university press offices) like to have such lines in pop science articles, and how it goes is that there's an interview from which the writer "interprets" some quotes. These are typically sent to the interviewee to check, but many don't bother to push back so much of it's not egregiously bad.
Recently I was reading about blind people’s experience of Netflix having been poor (no audio descriptions) for years and years and the media never picking it up despite organized groups begging them to do so…until Daredevil was released and outrageous headlines like “blind people can’t enjoy a show about a blind superhero” became possible.
And of course, Netflix released audio descriptions post haste once the headlines hit…turns out it was trivial all along.
The moral of the story is, if you want it in the press, make it outrageous first.
I think this is an example of mystifying-for-marketing as used in academia, like portraying this research as some breakthrough at a level that exceeds human understanding. IMHO practitioners of science should be expected to do better than this.