Branching off of what you were saying, being an ML expert requires a high level of math typically only seen in academia, aka PhD required. Being an expert in us

Branching off of what you were saying, being an ML expert requires a high level of math typically only seen in academia, aka PhD required. Being an expert in using ML requires you to be an expert in your own field, and understanding your specific problem. Whether that requires a PhD is dependent on the field, but at the PhD level you end up collecting and analyzing significant amounts of data, and through that, understanding how to apply ML to that type of data, if applicable. PhD for industry is useful for research and development positions in a variety of fields. Just like companies see bachelor's degrees as proof you can stick with something for 4 years and complete it, PhD degrees are proof you can develop and implement research procedures on a long time scale.