I would guess that the rat race in that case is probably driven by the ability of the machine learning industry to pull people from academia. So the rat race is

I would guess that the rat race in that case is probably driven by the ability of the machine learning industry to pull people from academia. So the rat race is a literal one, with people trying to get hired by Google, Meta, and the like. In general though, I am with you. I don’t understand why people are in such a hurry all the time these days. I have a personal principle that I move slow to move fast. Moving slow and methodically is almost always faster in the end.