Alchemy of Artificial Intelligence, Mysteries of Backboxes, and Proximity to Kings

To my readers it will appear as though I am writing some article on old Greek mythology, but you will soon realize that the world remains the same the more it changes. Recently Ali Rahimi, a researcher in artificial intelligence at Google, compared machine learning with alchemy. Later a few technology journalists, more than ever before, started writing about the relationship between technology and alchemy. Alchemy is about using the "trial and error" method and coming out with a formula (mostly secret or something that cannot be deconstructed). Similarly, in machine learning a model is designed out of data, this model constantly learns and produces an output but nobody know how decisions are made.