Just because you don't understand exactly how something works, don't mean it's not useful. Someone who doesn't understand exactly how everything works, like how do bikes stay upright and how does gravity work, can still use the bike to acquire food or advance science.
Barrin92|5 years ago
The OP didn't say that it is not useful, what they implied was that it is not actually science, which is correct. Science is a system that produces and organises knowledge. Chomsky made this point many years ago in a similar debate in linguistics. Statistical learning might produce results, but it tells us virtually nothing about the underlying laws or structures that govern language use.
ML in its current from is effectively the modern version of behaviourism and will, or already does, suffer from the same issues.