[rcxdude]

> Really, where is this enthusiasm around ML coming from

Because the ML based approaches to exactly the kind of problem you are describing are the most effective which have appeared for a long time. This isn't just hype (though the hype will paper over the still huge difficulties involved in applying this approach), it's genuinely the only approach which has much hope of working (It's also worth pointing out that these systems are almost universally a collection of subsystems each of which employs neural nets or other ML approaches to varying degrees, not a single black box).