Controversial AI expert admits to plagiarism, blames hectic schedule

People scrolling through Siraj Raval’s Twitter feed, or watching his videos or paying money to hear his insights on “data literacy” likely expect that what they’re hearing are original pearls from an AI expert. Apparently, they shouldn’t. 

Raval has admitted to stealing large amounts of text in a recently published paper on “neural qubit,” which he says he has removed from his website (although it seems to still be available), along with a YouTube video related to the work.

In an Oct. 13 tweet Raval copped to the misconduct:  

(We advise scrolling through the comments on Raval’s tweet to see what his followers had to say in response to his admission.)

The plagiarism of the preprint by Nathan Killoran and colleagues was revealed on Twitter by Andrew Webb, an engineer in Manchester, England.  As Webb notes in one Tweet showing what appears to be a plagiarized passage:

Indeed, Webb says, that’s why he took to Twitter with the evidence: 

The YouTube channel Coffeezilla has more on the controversial course. 

Raval has not responded to our request for comment.

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