Well I am an engineer but I have no problems in buying that in case of forefront tech like AI where things are largely algorithmically exploratory, researchers with PHDs will be considered 'higher' than regular software devs. I have seen similar things happen in chip startups in olden days where relative importance of professional is decided by the nature of problem being solved. but sure to ack your point its just a different job, though the phd may be needed more at this stage of business. one way to gauge relative importance is if the budget were to go down 20% temporarily for a few quarters, which jobs would suffer most loss with least impact to business plan.