Comment by godelski

What I don't understand is with such small of a gap why this isn't a huge boon for research.

While there's a lot of money going towards research, there's less than there was years ago. There's been a shift towards engineering research and ML Engineer hiring. Fewer positions for lower level research than there were just a few years ago. I'm not saying don't do the higher level research, just that it seems weird to not do the lower level when the gap is so small.

I really suspect that the winner is going to be the one that isn't putting speed above all else. Like you said, first to market isn't everything. But if first to market is all the matters then you're also more likely to just be responding to noise in the system. The noisy signal of figuring out what that market is in the first place. It's really easy to get off track with that and lose sight of the actual directions you need to pursue.