I still think this was a fire drill. They knew it wasn't dangerous but they wanted the public to do their homework and come to the conclusion themselves.

That was, explicitly, part of the decision :

> This decision, as well as our discussion of it, is an experiment: while we are not sure that it is the right decision today, we believe that the AI community will eventually need to tackle the issue of publication norms in a thoughtful way in certain research areas

You mean PR to get more publicity

This is it, and all the other comments here are continuing to do that homework!

So they lied to the public then?

Wow, we should really trust these people today.