> machine learning is horrible at providing corrective action data
I don’t recognise the truth in what you are writing.
> there are supposed to be 22 pepperonis on the pizza, but only 19 were found
Instance segmentation is a solved problem. A properly constructed and trained neural network can tell you exactly how many pepperonies it sees and exactly where. Telling if that is the right number is a trivial problem from there.
> the diameter of the pizza is out of tolerance by 8mm
Here too, the neural network can recognise the edges of the pizza and then you can fit a shape to it. You can do this second step either with classical algorithms or with a machine learning one. (I would use a classical algorithm if the pizza is meant to be circular or rectangular shaped, and a machine learning algorithm if they are aiming for something weird, like an Italy shaped pizza or something.)
> Machine learning leans towards "it's not a good pizza"
Sounds like you have only heard of simple classifier models.
