The actual quote: "Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions" makes no indication it was a neural net ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan
Eric Raymond kinda butchered the Jargon File when he took over maintenance, so it wouldn't surprise me if some of the text there is invented. The original Jargon File does not contain any koans: