yeah chomsky used to talk about this that AI is no understanding. but...symbolic regression changed all that (basically guessing formulas based on data points).

neural networks basically approximate very very complex function reasonably well. a function has inputs and outputs, and neural nets accept a very wide range of those inputs and outputs, and produce something similar to what humans expects.

one such function might be: given a line of hint, produce a coherent article. another might be: given various images, identify what's in them and where are those objects.