I think another aspect of the current boom in AI is that it is model-less curve fitting (to use your description), and that this is both revolutionary and regre

I think another aspect of the current boom in AI is that it is model-less curve fitting (to use your description), and that this is both revolutionary and regressive. On the one hand machine learning algorithms let us solve fuzzy problems that we don't necessarily understand deeply, but the trade off is that those solutions don't give us any real fundamental insight into the nature of the problem the same way e.g. discovering new physics would. So we are now able to solve all these problems that we couldn't before, but in a sense these solutions are unfulfilling because they reveal little else.