As someone presently doing a PhD in machine learning and neuroscience, which includes submitting to AI conferences...
Frankly, I think this is a bubble, and don't expect to ever make anything like that much money, in academia or industry. Yes, deep learning has a lot of successes and industrial applications, but deep learning wizards are not nearly so impossible to replace or replicate. As the field settles more towards engineering than wizardry, and as expectations are recalibrated towards the realistic, it's going to stop raining cash.
I'm a grad student, so my current means are pretty modest, but, well, yeah. Not saving and paying down debts is insane in an economy that is either in a recession or about to be.
Frankly, I think this is a bubble, and don't expect to ever make anything like that much money, in academia or industry. Yes, deep learning has a lot of successes and industrial applications, but deep learning wizards are not nearly so impossible to replace or replicate. As the field settles more towards engineering than wizardry, and as expectations are recalibrated towards the realistic, it's going to stop raining cash.