Driving follows physics mechanics, is a skill and is much more involved than search. Search is designed to be a black box for most people.

But ignoring that, no, I still would not like to see people professionally criticizing processes and products that they do not understand. Some technical knowledge is a must for people who do professional talks or presentations, write books and research papers and teach on the topic.

For algorithms and ML, I would expect at the very least a bachelors in math/CS or the equivalent in work/personal project experience.