Isn't this surrogation of university degrees for worthiness of employment getting absurd? A PhD holder is supposed to be on the frontier of some domain of knowledge. As human knowledge expands, it should be taking students longer to earn a PhD. But the insistence of employers on hiring only PhDs for certain roles incentivises this acceleration of PhD programs that undermine their original purpose. Three-year Bachelor's degrees are becoming more common for the same reason.
With AI, the speed of finishing a project and publishing a paper is very much accelerated. But you are right that the industry role in the program diverges from the original goal of independent academic research. But my guess is that there will be students liking this program.
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a $47 million investment over five years, along with additional financial commitments from nearly three dozen universities and private industry, to launch a pilot of a new four-year Ph.D. model that will provide more than 250 doctoral students nationwide with hands-on experience in industry research and development as part of their graduate education.