Advanced pattern matching is called science and has been how humans have made progress by taking data and writing down models for them. Now computers do it. End to end algorithms are 'black box' but machine learning in general is much broader than that and is providing understanding in many fields. Sorry you only see/know the "draw a box around a pedestrian' stuff, but try not to judge entire fields based off of limited exposure.

I think you are highly underestimating how much science and math comes mainly from advanced pattern matching.

Most stuff is proven by using advanced pattern matching as "intuition", and then breaking problems down into things we can pattern match and prove.

I'm not sure what conceptual understanding you think isn't pattern matching. They are just rules about patterns and interactions of patterns. These rules were developed through pattern matching.