Adding lots of GPUs and CPUs doesn't make that not true. Those processing units still work by executing a series of instructions, they just do some fancy things with regards to the order of instructions and communication between units.

It may be more productive to think of things in terms of a more abstract, functional model of computing, but in the end, for anything to actually happen, that abstract model must be translated in to some series of instructions. I think that's what the quote was trying to get at.