And, I think you're overly optimistic about the generality of some of these problems and the effort going into them.

I believe a significant portion of the implementation effort is going toward more effectively delivering ads and consumption, whether they're also writing a paper about indirectly related research or not. Google's most profitable business, by far, is their ads business. They would be crazy to not expend significant money and effort to retain their lead in that space. Other stuff that comes out of it (as nice as often it is, and as much as I enjoy it) is often just a pleasant side effect.

But, I could be wrong. I would also like to point out that I don't have other ideas on funding AI or big data research. I'm just uncomfortable with it, though I don't expect others to necessarily share that discomfort.