If you look in the later pages of the article, once they've finished with the hyperbole and pop-science spin, their actual plans look pretty reasonable. They wa

If you look in the later pages of the article, once they've finished with the hyperbole and pop-science spin, their actual plans look pretty reasonable. They want to use a chip combining memristors and conventional microprocessors to control a robot in a complex obstacle course. The hope is that some kind of neural network will be helpful for such tasks, if they figure out the right layout for the neurons and interconnections. If that's the case, then they have the hardware to make this potentially faster, more compact, and more power-efficient than more conventional approaches. tldr: This isn't about general intelligence. It's about improving robotics: computer vision, motion planning, integrating multiple senses -- that sort of thing.