Right, but that's pretty much true of industry as well. I just don't see any examples of major scientific breakthroughs coming from industry that aren't equally coming from universities.
His essay seemed to say that the cautious incrementalism and turf-buildout that succeeds well with NSF (where most of the funding for academic ML research comes from), turned out to be less exciting than riding upon the Google juggernaut.
It's hard to argue with that. The applicability of ML technology has attracted companies with deep pockets, and really changed the landscape of research.
