Machine learning is a useful technique. But that's all it is: a technique.

"AI" OTOH does not exist unless one adopts a strange definition of "intelligence".

An intelligent person can tell us how they arrived at a conclusion. "AI" cannot.

That's a massive timekill to (temporarily) "fix" when the conclusion is wrong. The process is a black box.

Even with old search techniques one can understand the process used to arrive at the results. When results are not what we want, we can understand why.