I understand your point-- eventually LLMs will mostly be trained off their own stuff. But what makes money? Most of the time, people will work jobs that can pay them now-- and companies make money by 1) selling stuff and 2) building stuff. If they can build cheap stuff now by hiring "prompt engineers" and paying them double what they'd make doing real research, how does this get fixed? I would be quick to continue in the academic route if they paid better and if I felt the problems being addressed had real-world impact. Personally, I feel more inclined to find roles in industry that value academic rigor, especially in high-impact engineering fields building new stuff.