Your CTM analogy is not the best choice: I'd hazard to say probably around 90-95% of CTM is utter nonsense (and 99.9% of the internal justifications are), but, without CTM they'd have never discovered artemisinin, which is being deployed as a first-line treatment for malaria in areas where there is resistance to chloroquine.
Please don't get me wrong: there is no future for CTM. You are 100% correct about this. However, quackery is still not a thing of the past. Therefore, I would ask of you not to debunk CTM or to point to its weaknesses (which has been done infinite times). I would like to know the AI-specific answers to your three questions (in your words or in a linked essay / paper). In a way, I don't want AI to be the "quackery of computer science": people use and believe it but it has no advantages. I would love it to be real.
I am all for a future in which we can have AI/machine learning/deep learning if it actually makes a difference. But I would love to know your opinion on what difference that could be and a little on how to achieve that. Obviously it seems I am missing something since YC is eager to invest in this field (or fields).