>“Mustafa is taking time out right now after 10 hectic years,” a DeepMind spokeswoman said. She didn’t say why he was put on leave.
Its like someone heard a rumor and fed the quote into an article generator that pulled related snippets about moose. If this is a public spokeswoman, why is she unnamed? This isn't reporting.
The only other semi-substantive point is that this company was "heavily criticized" for using a lot patient data (presumably for training?) without proper authorization in the UK.
But I'm not really sure what makes that "heavy criticism" or why I should care.
It really seems like a non-article that only serves to give a nebulous negative haze without providing any information of value.
Personally I found the article interesting because I knew nothing about "Moose" or DeepMind Health beforehand.
No. That's the whole point of having a spokesperson.
It's become more common recently since the rise of small media (blogs, Buzzfeed, etc...), but the big players hardly ever do it. Sometimes it's used for brevity. For example, an article written for radio might not name the person just to fit into a certain number of seconds. That article can then end up on the web site without being re-written by the web team. It's possible that's what happened here, since Bloomberg has a radio network.
The New York Times publishes a book explaining how things work within its organization. There's a chapter about un-named sources, and the significant hoops a reporter must go through in order to not use names.