The reality is that's not how research works. Inspiration and breakthroughs don't come out of thin air; they come from the freedom to interact with other scient

The reality is that's not how research works. Inspiration and breakthroughs don't come out of thin air; they come from the freedom to interact with other scientists, process their ideas and work, and then combine them with a new perspective which is tested and then occasionally turns out to be better than the state of the art. The process of research builds a lot of tacit knowledge that can't just be picked up by secretly picketing machine learning conferences. It's a lot of hard work, and the benefits to doing it in collaboration with the wider scientific community far outweigh the added value from being able to keep some marginal contribution secret. The top-secret, non-collaborating research lab always falls behind, with perhaps the rare exception of certain large and well-funded government organizations.