On the flip side, if the rest of the process becomes easy and in some sense standardized (the art/craft of code is replaced with back-prop), then maybe the complements like data cleaning, model bias/error measuring, and interpretability become “the work” that the high-paid scientists/engineers focus on?

I can particularly imagine a regulatory environment much more rigorous than software has got away with thus far, for example strict requirements around certifying that your model doesn’t exhibit X Y Z biases according to standard frameworks of evaluation.