Human brains are also the culmination of billions of years of iterative development. Computers were only invented in the last century. I would not be surprised if computers could catch up given a few tens or hundred more years.
That is if we don't kill ourselves by making stupid mistakes.
I think 30 years is probably reasonable, if for “30 years” one reads “twice as long from now as commercially viable fusion generation actually was when first widely hailed as 15 years away”.
Theory is required for understanding, not for discovery. They are two different things. What gets a lot of scientists and statisticians worked up is how ML can outperform traditional models without always being interpretable. It’s like claiming the Wright brothers couldn’t build a flying machine without having a thorough understanding of the mechanics of flight. I can improve performance of my car by remapping the fuel without necessarily understanding the nuances of optimizing enthalpy. There’s levels of understanding, and they may not correlate completely to effectiveness. To that extent, it’s more engineering than science