Could AI be applied to protein folding?
Yes, and no :-)

In the meantime many protein structures can be predicted quite accurately - even those for which no reference fold had been known before. 

In this case the important buzz word is "big data": co-mutations (of charged amino acids) that can be found when sequencing many independent genomes. (... which indirectly bypasses the emphasis on dynamics for protein folding)

Editorial: 2017, Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/hundreds-elusive-protein-structures-pinned-down-genome-data

Perspective: Soding et al. , 2017, Science ( http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6322/248 ) 

Research article: Ovchinnikov et al. 2017, Science ( https://www.bakerlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ovchinnikov_science_2017.pdf )