I explicitly caveated my statement with "Using a PhD as a gateway into applied ML" for a reason. The vast majority of people going into applied ML are not pione

I explicitly caveated my statement with "Using a PhD as a gateway into applied ML" for a reason. The vast majority of people going into applied ML are not pioneering new methods. They're using ML as a tool to support business objectives. This is the group I'm talking about. The phrase "bent of mind" roughly implies "the way someone thinks". Its usage is declining I suppose but there's nothing connotatively nefarious there.