Part of me says that you are correct on all of these points. However I think you went too far on 3. Experimentation does not always follow theory in science. I

Part of me says that you are correct on all of these points. However I think you went too far on 3. Experimentation does not always follow theory in science. I would argue that many of the great discoveries of physics in the 20th century followed directly from startling results of experiments conducted at the end of the 19th century (the photoelectric effect for example). I agree that there seems to be an awful lot of experimenting going on and that hardware and large datasets have helped tremendously but there are also many researchers poking and prodding at deep learning theory [1, 2]. So from a glass-half-full perspective we have rapid (sometimes iterative) experimentation coupled with yawning gaps in theory to explain surprising results. In other words, the opposite of previous AI booms and a big reason to be optimistic despite all the hype. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.3831v1.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.3831v1.pdf [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.08225 https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.08225