I disagree. The metaphor we use in ML is that neurons are the nodes that receive the summed, weighted inputs from other neurons. Yes, the weights are the strengths of the connections between them. However, there are many more weights than neurons, so conflating the two doesn't make sense schematically. Also, neurons can also have other parameters which define their behavior such as bias and activation functions. Furthermore, the activation of a neuron defines the network's response to a stimuli, so these change depending on the input, whereas the weighs are constants (after being trained), that parameterize the system.

The analogy is that weights are synapses, not neurons. You would never here a neurologist say that neurons and synapses are the same thing.

> You mean the same neurons that don’t really exist,

“Neurons” are an abstraction that exists logically “between” the weights, but the weights themselves don’t have the features of neurons. (In that each weight is the weight of a connection between a neurons (or between a neuron and an input/output.) Weights are more synapses than neurons.