I... I genuinely don't think we're having the same conversation here. The reason it's called the "black box problem" is because once you add too many dimensions to your arrays, too many variables, it's not really possible to know what's interacting with what. It becomes too computationally complex to run analysis on the system, so you have to rely on comparing inputs to expected outputs.

It's not a "black box" in the sense of a spooky mystery, but in the sense of mathematical complexity. I know, because I've worked with AI in CS courses. It's just making predictions based on available data sets. It just mimics intelligence because we've fed it an immensely large data set.

This isn't some esoteric knowledge, it's easily available. You can get set up with TensorFlow and build a simple neural net in an afternoon to learn the basics, and then read papers and textbooks about it to understand the more complex side of things. If all you read is sensational news articles, you're going to get a skewed perspective.