The problem is the "desire to be relevant in an important technological shift".
There's loads of worthwhile research to do that has nothing to do with LLMs. A lot of it will not or cannot be done in an industrial environment because the time horizon is too long and uncertain. Stands to reason that people who thrive in a "high-pressure cooker" environment are not going to thrive when given a long-term, open-ended goal to pursue in relative solitude that requies "principles and philosophical opinions" that aren't grounded in "actual execution". That's what makes real (i.e. basic) research hard and different as opposed to applied research. Lots of people in industry claiming to be researchers or scientists who are anything but.
There's loads of worthwhile research to do that has nothing to do with LLMs. A lot of it will not or cannot be done in an industrial environment because the time horizon is too long and uncertain. Stands to reason that people who thrive in a "high-pressure cooker" environment are not going to thrive when given a long-term, open-ended goal to pursue in relative solitude that requies "principles and philosophical opinions" that aren't grounded in "actual execution". That's what makes real (i.e. basic) research hard and different as opposed to applied research. Lots of people in industry claiming to be researchers or scientists who are anything but.