Good question. I do think there are some bogus workshops, and at least a couple of the papers at this workshop seem to be written by people who don't understand the area very well. However, there's also a lot of great work in this workshop. It's also asking an important and fundamental question, which we have reason to believe has better answers than our current ones. I also think quantum ML is a perfectly sensible line of inquiry (although imo unlikely to pay off for a long time, if ever), even if its results are consistently overhyped in the media.

I don't really know what to do about the state of journalism, however. I thought I was being pretty hard on the author of this piece elsewhere in this thread, actually. I guess you could blame everyone who upvoted the article. On the other hand, we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

There is a screening process for NIPS workshops (which I've been part of the last two years) where more experienced researchers rate the proposed workshops. There are usually a couple that get through that I think shouldn't be. However, I'd rather let 1000 stupid workshops through than shut down the one seemingly weird one that's actually a promising direction. Because if not here, where can we nurture and support weird ideas?

Finally, I think workshops play a vital role in onboarding newcomers to the field. One of the main ways you learn is by writing papers, and workshops lower the barrier to getting something out the door and getting feedback on it.