I think that's because the majority of folks using ML care only about discriminative ML, not generative. A black box ML technique that delivers low predictive

I think that's because the majority of folks using ML care only about discriminative ML, not generative. A black box ML technique that delivers low predictive errors is good enough. To those ends, parsimony is largely irrelevant. I suspect that others using ML, who are inclined to test hypotheses, induce cause, and discover unknowns (via generative ML), are far fewer. So it's hardly surprising that the eye of discriminative MLers dominates in defining 'sexiness'.