[andlima]

Machine Learning is about solving a task by automatically learning patterns based on examples and trying to generalize to new data. Granted, it's not necessarily the best approach to understand deeply how a phenomenon occurs.

You could use a black box model if you're more interested in predicting correctly images of handwritten digits than in understanding how the pixels relate to each other.

Of course, usually people want both accuracy and interpretability. It boils down to understanding what's more important for the problem at hand and making the compromises accordingly.