But I do AI and I work at a university. Developing AI might be too expensive if you're going for larger architectures and eeking out an extra % or two in a kaggle like problem. Most advances in machine learning to come though are in fields where there has been little activity. I'm currently en process of making a career out of using very basic machine learning methods and applying them to physical science problems because 95% of the people in the field don't know how (problem of tenure). This opens up lots of opportunities for funding though. NSF etc will literally just throw money at you if you say AI and that you'll apply it to any problem.