I kind of thought Neural Operators were slotting into the some problem domains where FEM is used (based on recent work in weather modelling, cloth modelling, etc) and thought there was some sort of FEM -> NO lineage. Did I completely misunderstand that whole thing?
Those are definitely up next in the flashy-new-thing pipeline and I'm not that up to speed on them yet.
Another group within my company is evaluating them right now and the early results seems to be "not very accurate, but directionally correct and very fast" so there may be some value in non-FEM experts using them to quickly tell if A or B is a better design; but will still need a more proper analysis in more accurate tools.
It's still early though and we're just starting to see the first non-research solvers hitting the market.
I was under the impression that the linear systems that come out of FEM methods are in some cases being solved by neural networks (or partially, e.g. as a preconditioner in an iterative scheme), but I don't know the details.
