where can i get more content of the flavor hard data science work that goes into doing “machine learning” at scale? i'm tired of indefensible projects built on OpenAI's APIs

Well some conferences tend to reward more concrete / practical work. I helped found Haystack (http://haystackconf.com), as one such idea. But still, people who propose talks, aren't going to talk about the mundane work. In the same way people who submit talks about software aren't going to talk as much about the mundane, everyday, uninteresting -- but essential -- unit tests they wrote.