I think it's too late, much like cryptographers lamenting the word "crypto", but I see where they're coming from. I have thought it is unfortunate that the popular conception of "the algorithm" is actually a remarkably bad example of an algorithm. I mean sure it's an algorithm - a computer is executing it - but when I think of an algorithm I think of a well defined sequence of steps solving a discrete problem. Whereas "the algorithm" / machine learning tends to attack a different kind of problem - "squishy" problems like recommendation systems where we don't really know how to explain how we come up with answers as a discrete list of instructions.