Inference, in the context of statistical analysis, refers to the task of understanding underlying properties of a distribution. This is the definition used by p

Inference, in the context of statistical analysis, refers to the task of understanding underlying properties of a distribution. This is the definition used by practitioners. Machine learning practitioners care more about computational performance or generalizability beyond seen data than they care about properties of a data-generating distribution. Your "bottom line" summary and repeated reference to algorithms as "bags of tricks" are reductionist statements suggesting you don't understand the nuanced, but important, differences between the fields.