I believe the difference is same as fitting a curve to a data and then predicting the result versus figuring out the physics behind the data and using that to p

I believe the difference is same as fitting a curve to a data and then predicting the result versus figuring out the physics behind the data and using that to predict the result. I would consider the latter as the AI. The former is just deriving possible result from a set of rules and how to combine them, which might be smart but is still lacks AI in strictest sense.