Interesting that you would use that example. I suspect, although I can't prove, that this is largely a mistake. Or maybe not so much a mistake as a choice that will wind up being revisited. That is, I think there is still a lot of "meat on the bone" for many of the AI techniques that were being explored in the 70's and 80's, and we will see another round of things suddenly coming back into favor at some point. It's happened before... remember when ANN's were completely out of vogue, and the computing power and data availability caused a sudden resurgence in interest in those? I would not be surprised to see similar things happening w/r/t various aspects of GOFAI.
More likely, I think we'll see additional integration / hybridization of probabilistic / pattern matching systems (using ANN's / Deep Learning / etc.) and symbolic processing and automated reasoning.
'course, I might be totally wrong, but that's my feeling ATM.
I'm thinking about research versions of Lord Kevin's favorite edict: "Heavier than air flying machines impossible" or the patent person (examiner? head of patent office?) who in the nineteenth century said everything that can be invented has been invented.