1. Games are great, especially the closer they get to the real 3d worlds with all the basic visual transforms in play. You can generate training data cheaper that helps you bootstrap the AI.

2. Your argument, which boils down to large organizations can accomplish more than individuals is in general true. But then that isn't saying anything new. Still, I'd prefer the car company give its blueprints than not. My factory (my cpu) can then at least build the car, albeit at a smaller scale. And soon my factory will be bigger/cheaper. Yeah I know, I'd like to be wealthy like Google too.

3. This is your own value judgement. The insight that we simplify AI architecture to some addition and multiplication is a big idea - in my opinion. Transistors are getting cheaper and I believe they will continue to do so. DNN are better suited to take advantage of this new computing power. Turns out, all those great discoveries were just some multiplications and adds the whole time ;)