There are two approaches to compare: Starting with hypothesis and starting with data collection. In former, hypothesis specifies which variables are likely ind

There are two approaches to compare: Starting with hypothesis and starting with data collection. In former, hypothesis specifies which variables are likely independent, dependent, must be controlled, so on, then makes observations to confirm. In latter, data is first collected with as many variables as possible, then we attempt to identify which variables are independent, etc, then confirm. To be cost efficient, many science experiments chose former. AI models use latter (get data, then find patterns, aka dependencies across variables). But even in latter, 1) human scientists can and do use the approach when appropriate, and 2) someone must have chosen the variables to observe which is a hypothesis (but lower precision is permitted in favor of higher recall). Long story short: It is sensational and in the best interest of the media to make it seem like some drastic change is happening, but the way we the humankind is growing our collective knowledge is still fundamentally consistent, except with some added techniques thanks to low cost of studying large scale data, and it would serve us well to focus on the fundamentals and basics. The scientific approach.