@GossiTheDog

FWIW, here's my take.

0: "AI" means three things nowadays: neural nets, machine learning, and LLM stuff. They are different things.
1: There was a paper in Science last year in which Materials Science types were doing some seriously kewl work on systems with 5 different metals using "machine learning" (gradient descent search in high dimensional spaces). And calling it AI.
2: The Econ. grad student didn't understand this and thought they were doing LLM stuff. Oops.

@djl @GossiTheDog

Probably an incorrect take. This looks more like deliberate fraud, rather than an econ PhD student making an honest mistake because of the WSJ citation of how this fraud, in Jan 2025, was brought to the attention of the two MIT professors who championed the lie by a "...computer scientist with experience in materials science (who) questioned how the technology worked, and how a lab THAT HE WASN'T AWARE OF (caps added) had experienced gains in innovation".
MIT is small enough that their star Nobel Econ laureate and any of his little army of econ PhDs could have easily checked with Materials Science. Straight up professional humiliating embarrassment.
Toner-Rodgers MIT second year student PhD web page was deleted by MIT. Signs point to an expulsion (fraud) not a suspension (honest mistake).

@pattykimura @GossiTheDog

"Probably an incorrect take"

Yep. I'm more irritated by inconceiveble stupidity than deliberate fraud, so that's where I go. But your:

"Straight up professional humiliating embarrassment."

is spot on.