He was curious enough to spend some time on it and was worried it would sink more of his time with all the sub problems it is presented and asks specifically Stephan wolfram to disengage on this

He talks about his preference of working with authentic and trustworthy .

Maybe a younger Knuth may have spent more time , but I perhaps think not that likely really .

This is simply not a area of interest for him, he does truly understand the impact and potential - When he talks about novelists not capturing precursors to singularity and how millions of people have access to 0.01 % intelligence for free .

I don’t think he is dismissive of its potential and future , he is not working on everything that can change the world in computing just his areas of interest.

Perhaps you (I am certainly) disappointed that someone of Knuth’s stature is not going to spend time on an emerging field and that’s what really bothers us..