Do you think that genetic programming and machine learning are effective avenues to pursue regarding this? Or is that introducing unnecessary complexity in many/most cases?
Either way, the idea of machines or systems as "living" and able to communicate intent and process, even if only within their own "umwelt", is really interesting. Even a taste of that would make modern systems easier to debug and understand, if not more robust (which would be a better starting point for many systems anyway I suppose).
Neural networks definitely are black boxes, at least at an individual level. Sure the concept remains the same generally, but the internals are different and hidden from case to case