This is why I'm happy most of all the iterative improvement and breakthroughs in ML are happening at research labs, public or private. When papers get published, you usually know who contributed to the endeavor.
I'm curious how you would even know? If Google is making ML breakthroughs, I think it's quite obvious they won't be immediately publishing them if they are actually commercially useful.
Right, but I'm saying once they actually hit commercially useful breakthroughs (e.g. AI game changer/black swan) they certainly won't be sharing them any longer.
Or put another way, they could currently be holding back 90% of their current research and only releasing 10%.
I'm not saying that is the case, it's just I think private research into some fields is much more opaque than folks (myself) realize. Relying on Google (or any other private company) to publish findings is likely not a path for long-term success.