You're right about how machine learning is learning to approximate a function - most machine learning systems are mathematically equivalent to stochastic gradient descent, a statistical method which can, theoretically, do the same thing.
The surprise was that people (me, at least!) thought the computation and amount of data required to learn a function like "translate English to French" would be completely impractical to ever realize.
I think it's open question whether humans work like that, though we probably do.
This is really fascinating, assuming it is true, it could imply that everything we "learn" is essentially a training process in our brain to store a new model/function. As humans we've figured out how to transfer these models between our brains through communication. Maybe it is possible to "upload" a model
to the brain like Neo learning kung-fu...
The surprise was that people (me, at least!) thought the computation and amount of data required to learn a function like "translate English to French" would be completely impractical to ever realize.
I think it's open question whether humans work like that, though we probably do.