There is a Feuerbachian quality to the ideas in the category "What if the universe works like an X?" X gets substituted with the misunderstood but prized tech du jour. We've gone from the clockwork universe[1] of mechanical philosophy[2] to the computational universe[3] and now taking a tangent to the neural network universe. If history is a guide, you can bet that what ever sufficiently exalted and misunderstood technology appears there will be an associated theory of the universe attached to it. It says more about us than it does about the universe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_philosophy

[3] https://academic.oup.com/pq/article-abstract/53/211/243/1610...