Google forms Montreal AI research group, gives $3.37M

First, salary varies depending on what you mean by researcher. Someone with an MS in a hot field is going to make more as a specialist than a PhD student or postdoc in academia and professor salaries can heavily depend based on rank and funding. Some people at the top make out quite well, but they are either 1) entrenched in the bureaucracy (e.g. grant writing, publicity, actually running the university) and removed from actual research or 2) they have a side job (see Steven LaValle or any business school professor who does consulting work).

Second, looking at the exact quote from the article ("Uber has just bought a half-a-year-old company [Otto] with 70 employees for almost $700 million"), the analysis is off. Yes, $700 million / 70 people = $10 million per person, but they aren't just paying for people. They are paying for tech, code, IP, basically whatever the company has. Anyone who had points on the package there was probably pretty happy considering the company was less than a year old, but any developer without shares didn't suddenly become a millionaire over night.

This all said, if you are a specialist in a niche field that's going through a renaissance (which both robotics and ML are doing right now), you can command a nice salary.