I have been applying Deep Learning to novel scenarios since my last year of undergraduate degree and getting paid for it.

You could call that research.

I have applied DL to fields before anyone had done so.

My plus points were-

1. Being in a reputed uni (but nothing like an Ivy League or similar)

2. Completed a lot of MOOCs where I studied seriously.

3. Very unique and non-trivial projects (Titanic and House-Price Prediction not even on my resume).

4. Accepting less pay because cost-of-living is low in my country.

5. You could say that I am a good communicator (I have been in performing arts and writing since single-digit age. These do give you advantages.)

I just finished my undergrad few months back. I am still with my old company. But will join a serverless computing start-up this December by a very successful serial entrepreneur.

This work will involve applying Self Supervised Learning to Vision problems.

Now, none of these "work" is full-time, per se.

I never accept full-time employment where you have to attend stand-ups and get micromanaged.

I am in no dire need of money.

I get approached by recruiters regularly.

The best one was from Aleph Alpha.

But I don't want to leave my studies at this stage, because one day, I want to work at bleeding-edge problems at Tesla, Google X, Microsoft Research, DeepMind, OpenAI, or similar companies of the future.

I don't want to do consulting all my life where I solve business problems with science and technology developed by others.

This is really interesting work, and I acknowledge that. But still, I want to work at somewhere where my work can impact a lot of lives.

Now, is it possible to do good research without a PhD, as in "ability"? Yes, absolutely.

But good luck with convincing that to the people that will matter.

The big companies, and Elon, personally push open education, does not push university education publicly.

But please look at the people they hire.

Attend any public, or not so public Machine Learning event, and look at the profiles of the speakers. They all hold degrees from very reputed unis (Stanford, Berkeley, and like that), and Masters and PhDs at that.

They will only hire those people. Whether it is DeepMind or Hugging Face.

Now, despite my thinking that I, personally can have a good career without a Master degree or a PhD, I am not risking it.

I am getting into a Master's this year or the next.

I would also like to do a PhD not only because I want to work at DeepMind some day, but also:

1. I genuinely enjoy teaching and would like to remain in a regular teaching profession- full time or part-time. Having a PhD makes this easier.

2. There is always the attraction of pushing the knowledge of the human race.

_____

To answer your question directly, I would say, yes, it is possible, but your brother would have to be really extra-ordinary. It is possible to find people who have graduate degrees from Stanford and are extremely capable and are interesting people. And if your brother does not have the former, he must have a lot in the latter.

And still, it will be hard to convince the people that will matter.

I will focus on-

1. First and foremost, get really good and original papers out in journals, and not just arXiv.

2. Do non-trivial projects that shows capability and originality in thinking.

3. Network really well.

4. Grow soft skills like writing, communication, etc.