If an article said “supermarket checkout clerks are earning over $1m” and the article explained that a couple of retired property investors decided to work at a supermarket, would you respond the same?
The harsh reality is, very few people will have the tenacity, intelligence, and opportunities to become a top 20 AI researcher, especially in their 20s.
And it's to your detriment, because there are a lot more than 20 people making that kind of money in software today.
Note further that AI is in fact a subset of software. There is nothing magic about it that somebody like yourself or anybody else here can't pick up.
You seem to grudgingly accept that doing so can make you a lot more money. But still you go out of your way to insist that you, personally can't do that.
Why?
You might as well say that Michael Schumacher just drives a car pretty well, so most of us could spend a bit of time in training and win F1
The reason I go out of my way to insist I can’t do that is that I’m not in my 20s, and it would be delusional of me to think AI is “nothing magic” and I can watch some YouTube videos to become the worlds best.