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Not sure if I understand, but it seems the dendrites are "grouped" in a way, and their influence on the output is a function of the group?

Is this functionally equivalent to having a two layer mini-network (that represents one brain neuron), with one neuron on top, and "child" neurons on bottom that mimic the grouping behavior? If this is true, then I would suspect our networks are already doing something like this automatically.

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yes, the linked papers deal with this 2-layer abstraction of a single neuron. In reality, the neuron-to-neuron connections however are different from dendrite-soma coupling and those levels (Dendrite and soma) differ in terms of their ability to integrate synaptic inputs and undergoing plasticity, so they re not really equivalent. This is still an active area of research with a lot of unknowns.

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