Instead of framing this from the negative, can you frame it in the affirmative. In other words, I know that you don't want to work in a large corp, the gov't, or a university. Where do you want to work?
I was a bit unclear, but what I mean is that can I live a life where I build things and get paid for it as opposed to spending time writing research papers and attending conferences, which I am under the impression requires getting a PhD to be taken seriously.
As far as where to work, anything from a startup to a large corporate company could potentially fit the bill.
In that case, yes; I think there is plenty of opportunity to use machine learning (from relatively simple implementations to more advanced stuff) in many businesses. For example, I run a simple college admissions website, and we use some basic machine learning techniques. If we're using it, I imagine that nearly every field could take advantage of it in one way or another.
