Tens of thousands of people attended a vigil in London to pay tribute to 41-year-old Jason Arday, the former Cambridge professor who died right after being publicly accused of plagiarism and making grandiose claims about his supposed achievements. Delicately poetic looking with dreadlocks and kohl rimmed eyes, young Arday cut a dashing figure, indeed. His good looks combined with a prestigious post in academia ensured admiration and celebrity. Ultimately, it all came to naught; he was brutally roasted for wildly inconsistent lies, each one gleefully torn apart by the British mainstream media.

The crowd at the vigil seemed greatly moved by the “unfair” level of scrutiny Arday endured, the sub-text being his white peers wouldn’t have had to face the same. Emotional speeches about the vicious media “hounding” that led to his death touched on “institutional racism”, but there hasn’t been much said about the far more likely cause, the devastating embarrassment that stems from being trapped and exposed in a situation of one’s own making. For someone extra sensitive, being outed as a fraud is shattering enough to not want to wake up the next morning. In other words, it’s all too possible that Arday couldn’t hack his own stupidity. This outpouring of sympathy for his tragic end brings to mind Jim Morrison’s profound observation in the poem A Feast of Friends: Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven claws.

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After any shocking incident, an instinct kicks in, reminding us we are all flawed beings, trying our best to get by. We’re forced to reflect on our own mortality. It’s more comforting to ascribe blame or find reasons to explain ordinary human fragility than hold people responsible for their choices. On the scale of terrible things people do to one another, garnering the spotlight by boasting seems pretty minor. Ideally, nobody should have to die for it. However, the reactions and conversations around Arday’s death raise important questions and shed an (alarming) light on changing value systems. Does pursuing the right to social justice trump pursuing the truth? Or can we agree that both racial injustice and intellectual dishonesty are to be lamented equally?

It is worth noting that the ChatGPT era has redefined how we think about originality. Plagiarism used to mean passing off someone else’s work as one’s own, but students now are open about using AI to write academically perfect essays. A far cry from when we grew up in the 80s when anyone who cheated during an exam was treated with withering scorn (copycat!). Interestingly, one no longer hears of schools rusticating students for unethical exam practices. In this scenario, the thinking goes: everyone’s handing in AI-assisted assignments, so is it so bad that Arday was masquerading as a pseudo highbrow?

I’m going to stick my neck out and say it is actually that bad. Post-generative AI is so clever that plagiarism can no longer be reliably detected, as long as the user asks ChatGPT to paraphrase the content. If the Ardays’ of this world are allowed to flourish unheeded, the future means endless, tired regurgitations of stuff that already exists. Nothing new will emerge; society will remain stagnant. And surely that poor, nameless PhD student who toiled away in obscurity to come up with a new perspective — only to have the far more famous and networked Arday grab it for himself — deserves some sympathy, too. We’re told not to badmouth the dead, but there’s the thought that people who’ve made their fortune via a public reputation have a greater duty to maintain the highest integrity.

The writer is director, Hutkay Films