We're also a neural network, are we any more clever than a simulated one?

This is tangential, but it is highly unlikely that we are "a neural network". Neural networks are an architecture loosely inspired by some aspects of the brain, but e.g. it's highly unlikely that we learn by backpropagation (neural signals don't travel in that direction). The brain is a network of neurons, but neural networks are something else. Neural networks probably don't work as the brain does.