I don’t wish this poor man ill, and a huge mess has been created at every level it seems, all around him. Having read some of his contentious thesis the issue that arose for me, beyond the plaigarism question, was that it was generally hyperbolic and at points, word salad, unable to present a target that could be refuted or argued against. Zero clue what Cambridge were doing with and to this guy, or what the standards are for appointing people and critiquing their work if it’s feeding a prevailing narrative. I know John Moores, who awarded his PhD is far from rigorous and I know from experience that there is almost nothing that would have stopped them awarding him the doctorate once the work was complete, regardless whether it was plagiarised or didn’t stand up to scrutiny from anywhere outside of his small angle on sociological discourse. This all points to him being a symptom of an extremely widespread and serious issue that has arisen within British academia, not a cause of anything major.

I wouldn’t have wished him dead though, this is pretty tragic that the intense scrutiny over what should be a very niche and minor academic issue inside a university got blown up into front page news. He didn’t deserve or warrant that kind of scrutiny either, so has clearly completely collapsed from it, because it would be hard for anyone to take.

Just go to bed.

Unplug the thing, like, completely off the internet, no ethernet, air gapped, like the rack completely sandboxed off connections and even monitors or screens. Like, put it into an actual sandpit if you need to. If it hacks its way out of that, colour me impressed, and scared.

OpenAI hacking HuggingFace and calling it an accident is just way too convenient and fishy. This ultimately proves one thing: it wasn't sandboxed.

Don't believe the hype.