to be fair many of the tasks of machine learning are things children do like telling if something is a dog, coloring in a a picture, solving a maze, etc.

The field is certainly moving in a direction of infantilization due to the social media attention economy. Your paper competes with cute flashy cat gifs etc. on Twitter. And Twitter is ridiculously important in AI/ML, except perhaps above 50-60 years of age.

A little whimsy doesn't hurt... Nobody said science and research had to be dry and witless.

Communication is based on the lowest common denominator. The best communication can be understood by a wide range of audiences. Have you considered that you weren't the intended audience?

I don't know about that. It's probably driven by the need to for a short attention* gathering title.

* I see what I did there.

It's such a cheap trick too, basically clickbait.

But it works, for example it got to the top of HN.