Matrix multiplication is nothing to be laughed at. It is how anyone performs linear projection anyway. Fair enough to say, currently ML research is fixated on

Matrix multiplication is nothing to be laughed at. It is how anyone performs linear projection anyway. Fair enough to say, currently ML research is fixated on exhausting combinations of blocks to squeeze a marginal improve on a few public benchmarks. But it is like saying software has been stagnated since we are not getting new ISA created. Building ML application remains as challenging as ever, it is just modeling itself has become streamlined before everything else.