Stanford professor rebuts 'industry can subsume academia' claim: blue-sky research has no industry incentive
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-10-21
Stanford professor Anshul Kundaje pushed back on claims that industry can simply absorb all activities academia does, calling it baseless propaganda from disgruntled critics.
His core argument: large swaths of topics are simply not on industry's radar — open-ended blue-sky research across all fields cannot happen in industry because there is no incentive structure for it, and that is precisely why academia exists. He acknowledges the system is broken in many ways and needs reinvention.
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