AI research is a max-performance domain

A recent clarity that I gained is viewing AI research as a “max-performance domain”, which means that you can be world-class by being very good at only one part of your job. As long as you can create seminal impact (e.g., train the best model, start a new paradigm, or create widely adopted benchmarks), it doesn’t matter if you’re incompetent at adjacent skills. For example, I have seen…