Bill Ackman @ BillAckman

X ^ | Jan 6, 2023 | Bill Ackman

[chickenlips]

Last night, no one at @MIT had a good night’s sleep.

Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT’s administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus.

Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work of others.

But it wasn’t just the MIT faculty that did not sleep last night. The @Harvard faculty, its governing board members, and its administrative leadership did not sleep either. Because why would we stop at MIT?

Don’t we have to do a deep dive into academic integrity at Harvard as well?

What about Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth? You get the point.

While we are going to do a detailed review of plagiarism at MIT, we are not going to be the only ones who do so.

Every college and university in the world is going to have to do the same for themselves. They will do so because they will need to validate all plagiarism accusations, or someone else will do it for them.

The best approach, however, is probably to launch an AI startup to do this job (I would be interested in investing in one) as there is plenty of work to do, and many institutions won’t have the resources to do it on their own. Perhaps more importantly, the donors are going to demand that the review is done by an independent third party.

[chickenlips]

Folks there's a lot more at the link and you'll have to go to there for the details. Ackman is about to nuke the Ivys.

[Ann Archy]

GOD HELP HIM!!! But isn’t his wife a plagarist?

[The Louiswu]

So what’s the endgame? Losing tenure? Fines?

[Reverend Wright]

Strictly speaking, MIT is an academics only school, and not an Ivy. (no legacies, no athletic scholarships)

MIT is more academically prestigious, but less influential than the Ivies in terms of influential graduates and policy direction for the elites.

I still think it is a good target, but will get less plagiarism revealed than going after the Ivies directly - Yale and harvard should be #1 and #2 targets.

[SauronOfMordor]

Yes, MIT could revoke his wife’s tenure over plagiarism claims.

But so what? Her husband is a billionaire, and she works in tech, where what matters is what your latest ideas are.

[bankwalker]

It's all spelled out in the link. It is a lengthy and detailed read. Here is a sample:

The Impact of Higher Education on Society and Our Country

When I woke up on the morning of October 7th, my first thought was not that I was going to launch an effort to save higher education from itself. I had other more pressing concerns about the world, and I still have these concerns. But as we all know, our higher education system (HES) is critically important as it can affect and influence the minds of our younger generations, thereby profoundly impacting the lives of all of us.

The HES can affect what’s taught to toddlers and what is taught in elementary and high schools, as ed schools train the next generation of teachers and superintendents, and design the curricula they teach.

The HES can convince a generation that some of us are oppressors, and others are the oppressed, and provide justifications for what kinds and what degree of violence and terrorism are appropriate tools to address this perceived oppression.

The HES can affect our medical establishments and the ethics of medicine, e.g., some of our most controversial procedures and medicines, and the advisability of their use on children, and so on. You get the point, I am sure.

The HES affects our legal system, our ethics, and our basic understanding of right and wrong.

It affects how we think about capitalism and our economic system, and how we address wealth inequality, taxation, monetary and fiscal policy, and consider universal basic income and other alternatives.

It also affects religion and how it is practiced and no longer practiced around the country.

It can advance a monetary theory which states that the U.S. as a sovereign nation has effectively no limit to its spending because it can just print new money without any consequences or loss of solvency.

And then, of course, the graduates of our education system over time become the judges, the Supreme Court justices, the politicians, the members of the media, and the other people that influence and determine our way of life, and help us understand the truth, but whose truth? you might ask.

The HES influences how our national voting system should be administered; the standards for eligibility to run for office; how the primary system works, and what it takes to qualify to be on a ballot in a state.

I could continue, but I am sure that you already understand the power of the HES. You don’t need me to tell you how important it is.

In light of the power of HES, those interested in power would of course desire to take control of our most prestigious and influential universities so that they could ultimately take control of our education system, our government, and then the country at large.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

Good to see some ‘big money’ folks fighting the DEI infestation.

Unlike far too many ‘big money’ folks pushing WOKE agendas.

[Jane Long]

Good!

Go after the DS/Globalists!!

[Cen-Tejas]

Very long. I read about half of it. Hooray for Ackman!

Plagiarists are strychnine to education and thus all of us because one way or another, sooner or later, “education” adheres to all of us.

I had a major cancer operation a year and one half ago. It went well. I didn’t even have to take a pill AFTER the operation. Did the surgeon plagiarize? I don’t know. Does it matter? Now it doesn’t but cheaters that may cut your body open should be of interest to you.

[Reverend Wright]

More important, Ackman likes to quote Martin Luther King as his inspiration for racial justice.

So proving plagiarism doesn’t guarantee that someone will be discredited, and ignored.

[Honorary Serb]

All of us may have failed to put in quotation marks a few times without being wholesale plagiarists.

But AI will identify everything if it is used the way Ackman intends! Yikes!

[nonliberal]

And he’s donated hundreds of thousands to Dems. He funded this, endorsed it and voted for it.

[Reverend Wright]

Billions !

He has put billions into just this outfit, which pushes all the DEI leftist crap that Ackman has “suddenly” realized discriminates against whites.

https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/portfolio/

[monkeyshine]

I have both admired and cringed at Ackman’s gumption over the years in the financial markets. This stunt is par for the course for him, but in this case it is admirable. He’s right; the nonsense and hypocrisy has to be brought to an end. More left leaning people need to wake up. The Democrats are not the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy, or even Clinton.

[nonliberal]

Well, someone accused his wife of plagiarism. I think that pissed him off.

[Drew68]

Ackman is about to nuke the Ivys.

I was going to post this exact thread myself and then I got sidetracked. Thanks for posting this!

Yep. It's not going to end well for the Ivies. It's about time. We need a better method for credentialism than now useless college degrees. The entire higher ed system is broken.

[Lockbox]

Nothing like the wrath of a Billionaire…… popcorn anyone?

[DoodleBob]

There was an episode of King of the Hill where Dale was releasing fire ants to kill Hank’s grass, to drum up business.

Peggy bought Hank “Eco-Kill” which works by releasing Phorid Flies into a plastic dome covering the ant hill.. Basically, the Phorid Flies lay eggs in the heads of the fire ants, eliminating the infestation.

Hank sets up the product, and smiles, saying:

This is exactly what those environmentalists should be spending their time on: Finding ways to use nature against other forms of nature that are inconvenient to man.

To all AI wankers and academics, who happily hoped that this technology would eliminate the need for The Little People…may I introduce to you…Professor-Kill.

[lightman]

For nearly a decade The Salvation Army has been using AI in its Officers’ Training School (Seminary) to detect plagiarism, including a cadet “recycling” portions of their own previous writings.

[Cen-Tejas]

I’m just amazed that a very prominent liberal like Ackman is leading this charge. Is it too late? I’m reminded of the old saying.....”why close the barn door now?.....the horses are already out of the barn.”