Comment by aleph_minus_one

> remnants of that talent pool—those who were left behind in the acquisition race—full of principles and philosophical opinions but with little to no grounded experience in actual execution.

I do believe that these people at universities do have experience in the actual execution - of doing research. What they obviously have less experience in is building companies.

> Instead, you find a bunch of PhD students who either didn’t make the cut to be hired by the aforementioned tech companies

Or because they live in a country where big tech is not a thing. Or because these people simply love doing research (I am rather not willing to call what these AI companies are doing "research").