Is that what "academia" wants? Last I checked "academia" is not a dude I can call and ask for an opinion or definition of what it was interested in.

I will make an explicit, plausible, counterpoint: academia wants to produce understanding. This is, more or less, by definition, not possible with an AI directly (obviously AIs can be useful in the process).

Take GR as an example. The vast majority of the dynamical character of the theory is inaccessible to human beings. We study it because we wanted to understand it, and only secondarily because we had a concrete "result" we were trying to "achieve."

A person who cares only about results and not about understanding is barely a person, in my opinion.