I don't think asking a researcher in AI why they couldn't work in industry that is willing to pay them tons more $$ is a bad question to ask. Its certainly not the same as asking a public servant to learn coding.

Living in the CS bubble, a lot of us forget that outsiders think of programming as some kind of black magic that they could never figure out ever. And are baffled that those who know it are not milking it as much as they can.