Corporations can influence the directions and conclusions of academic research without corrupting the beliefs of any individual scientist. In a phenomenon known as industry selection bias, companies direct funding and/or data toward scientists who already support the research approaches or technological solutions favored by industry.
A new paper out in Synthese expands on the earlier Holman and Bruner model of this scenario to illustrate how this process works.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-023-04158-7
@ct_bergstrom the substitution of cybernetics by AI in the 50s had a lot to do with that, even though both were looking at the mechanisms of intelligence and Shannon's concepts were clearly cybernetic. But because Wiener and others in cybernetics resisted military funding, the nascent "new field" of AI was happy to respond to that funding niche.
