[chrisamiller]

You're right that there are a variety of folks working on these things, both in academia and industry, but it's more complicated than "PhDs do this, others do that". It comes down to knowledge, ability, and experience, and the best research groups grab onto that wherever they can and slot people into the roles that are right for them.

[giantg2]

Seems more like politics where I'm at. My company won't let you work on the models without a PhD. Literally all I would do as an "ML Developer" would be cleaning and moving data plus APIs to provide input/output.