The PhD is sufficient but not necessary here, right? A PhD researcher's job description is basically "learn necessary math, become a domain expert, and publish papers advancing that domain." It's difficult (but possible) to gain the same experience in industry if you don't have a graduate degree. Which company would pay you to work through Bishop or Goodfellow for a few months? Even a principal DS doesn't get that deal, much less a junior/associate.
Also remember: my comment addressed non-vanilla cases. In your example, this is the difference between a researcher advancing 3D programming and someone using Unity or Unreal.
(Also, sorry for all the edits. Done now!)
Machine leaning for sorting peas at high speed is a very well trodden area at this point with a lot of industry specific domain knowledge. I expect self driving cars for example to reach a similar state in ~10-25 years.
The risk with a PHD is you miss the specific wave. But, if you want to stay on the bleeding edge it's probably well worth it.
Yep! We’ve now made our way back to my initial point in response to OP. :)
3D programming started as a field where only PHD's had any deep understanding of what was going on simply because they had experience when nobody else did. You see this pattern repeated frequently, in any complex domain.