uh, Andrew Kahng is not a "random UCSD professor". And its not just "arguing about research papers and peer reviews" its called Science. What we used to do before fake news.
Andrew Kahng has credentials, numerous published papers, and held various positions that other people deem to be prestigious -- but what has the man done?
To me, academia and Kahng look like middle-managers endlessly jerking each other off, while other people are out actually accomplishing things.
While it's possible to slap a label of ML on a mediocre product for marketing purposes, a strong and experienced engineering team generally won't use a new tool if it doesn't make their workflow substantially better.
As it turns out, they do! This method has been used in TPU for multiple generations, including the most recent.