You touch on a very central point there: meaning is what humans make of it.

Explaining nature causally using mathematical models isn't "the primary goal" of humanity. STEM people tend to have a weird misconception there, probably stemming from their misconceptualization of the humanities.

This in turns leads to this odd idea of "AI will think for us". That's pure (and pretty obvious) insanity. Logically minded people encountering it should ask, where the error in their reasoning is.