What makes AI ethicists "the top hire companies need to succeed"?

At the beginning of the year, KPMG published a list with the "top 5 AI hires companies need to succeed in 2019", with the "AI ethicist" ranking among them. Such lists definitely strengthen my'raison d'être'. Yet, when I tweeted something on this, reactions showed that not everyone shares this opinion. There is obviously no common understanding whether we need AI ethicists in the first place, and whether creating such a profile inevitably leads to "machinewashing". Let me address these concerns below and argue what it takes to really make AI ethicists a "top hire".