Neural networks are powerful without even training them. By merely designing the structure of them you are creating something.
Sussman attains enlightenment
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.
“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.
“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.
“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Closing your eyes so you can't see the contents of a room =/= the room is empty. Not knowing what something is, is different from it not existing
The gist as I remember it was that he theorized that the cortex is composed of assemblies of neurons formed in development (in the womb, potentially with epi-genetic factors). Each assembly, just by chance of it's structure, is likely good at something. Over time, assemblies take up the tasks they happen to be good at and further specialize with experience.