My read is that this is a technique that can make it easier to write certain types of machine learning applications - which means less coding, more giving the a

My read is that this is a technique that can make it easier to write certain types of machine learning applications - which means less coding, more giving the application data so that it can fine-tune it's behavior. There are also applications we don't know how to write, but we can train a program (a machine learning model) to behave that way. There would be domains where this would be a major advantage and (probably) applications where it wouldn't be particularly helpful. Best to think of it as another tool in the engineering toolbox.