Are modern ML PhDs becoming too incremental, or is this just what research looks like now? [D]

I’ve been thinking about the current state of machine learning PhDs, including my own work, and I’d like to hear how others see it. My impression is that a large fraction of modern ML PhD work follows a fairly predictable pattern: take an existing idea, connect it to another existing idea, apply it in a slightly different setting or community, tune the system carefully, add some benchmark results, and present the method as a new state-of-the-art approach. Another common pattern is mostly empiri