Once again, Doctorow (unsurprisingly) clickbaits and simplifies a headline with an exaggeration of the facts regarding the capabilities tested/found in the study.
If you provided the researchers with just the images in the “16x16” mosaic column they are not claiming the ability to depixelate them (83% of the time) back to the images in the “Original” column as the headline implies. HHHHHHhhhhhhhhh…