I'm a broken record on this, but I'd like to reiterate:

1. Academic ethics is the theoretical study of what you can get away with. (Law is the applied branch). Professors in ethics are not experts at being good, or knowing what is good, they're experts in how to get away with things. If you want an expert in being good, you need a saint, not an academic studying ethics. Saints are in short supply.

2. That said, ethics academics can still be decent. They don't have to be sanctimonious corporate shills . However, an "ethics expert" who hasn't threatened to quit and gone through with it at least once, should be assumed to be one.

I respect those who quit - or, at least, I respect them more. I wonder if it's more a reflection of the people, or of the state of the industry, that the list of (AI) ethics experts who have quit in protest is getting long.