If you're hired by a private company to do academic work, it may often be reasonable to expect academic norms to apply. I'm not sure why you're disgusted by the idea that people might take jobs at Google, who do quite serious work around AI.
I don’t think it is disgusting to expect that, but it most certainly is naive. There are a set of norms, but they are industrial-research norms, not academic norms and they overlap but are not the same
I agree that it is a perfectly reasonable expectation to have, however there is no notion of a tenure in a private company. To me that is a pretty fundamental distinction (with far reaching consequences) that people often overlook.