It's going to be very useful to know how all this stuff works so you can apply it or even just understand it, it's strengths and weaknesses. The is still a lot of stuff to happen and be done before any of it near enough useful and safe and reliable to be just let loose, if anything will be more and more need for "humans in the loop" as we maybe delegate some stuff to be a bit more ML assisted or even semi autonomous.

The original question is a bit "why bother with anything?" so a little hard to answer I think the way it was phrased.