> but all these will be controlled by large companies that can afford the ground work. So, I don't expect small outfits, research teams at universities or tiny startups, to make a big difference. Academia is fast losing the ability to produce work that beats the state-of-the-art anyway (that's from personal comms with other researches).

That makes me particularly sad. In a utilitarian sense, the ideal situation would involve new approaches being democratised. Instead, we're ending up with walled gardens.

The current situation isn't dissimilar to what has happened to the Web Platform during past 5-10 years. And, similar predictions are made wrt VR and AR (both seem to attract different types of investors).