I don't understand the advantage of this over just having a digital NN and then pushing the output to some electric motor?
The possible implication is, if consciousness can arise in a digital neural net, it can also arise in a mechanical system, you just need enough of levers and gears connected in a certain way.
That wasn't the point of the research as expressed in the article (note that the final image has a label for "Control electronics" underneath the mechanical system):
> Thus, this work lays the foundation for artificial-intelligent (AI) materials that can learn behaviors and properties.
With applications such as:
> use in aircraft wings to morph the shape in response to wind patterns to boost efficiency, adding reactive rigidity to buildings to better withstand earthquakes and other disasters, shockwave-deflecting reactive armor, or even the creation of surfaces able to perform acoustic imaging.
A NN implemented on a digital computer is a fixed way of varying the electrical field of the CPU (etc.) given (eg.,) an SSD state which produces a fixed way of varying (eg.,) a motor.
This is very (very) far away from adaptive motion at the "tissue" level.
The semi-mystical notion that a NN is a kind of "programming of reality" is false: just as a NN running on a CPU cannot perform nuclear fusion, it likewise, cannot produce material adaptation.
It is an open question whether any non-organic material is adaptive, and I'd bet against it.