That's a whole lot of gatekeeping right there ;) Big organizations ruled by money and career-driven people often run into very expensive dead ends without noti

That's a whole lot of gatekeeping right there ;) Big organizations ruled by money and career-driven people often run into very expensive dead ends without noticing for years (see the last AI winter, there was just too much hype, which then involved too much money being thrown around, which then lead to the usual organizational cruft). I would also be very concerned about any field in technology, if an intelligent person cannot make meaningful contributions after a few months or years, that would probably mean the whole field is already deep into diminishing returns and needs to be 'unstuck'.