Oh, I agree that the hammer could have fallen at any point. I do think that new pressures on Google in the search area raise the question a little more acutely.

Can't be, Paul. Schools are gun-free zones and the NRA/GOP is constantly telling us that this makes them LESS safe.

Can the next governor replace those people on the board? Seems it’s in Virginia residents best interest to have a world class public institution.

Yep. Prestige costs money to create (literally: highly-selective journals are more expensive to run in part because of their selectivity, not to mention their staff). And, if gold OA is to be the model, then author or their funders are agreeing to pay per paper for that prestige.

There's also a helpful criticism here that, if we have to constantly and meticulously double check the work of AI then is it a tool that really saves us time and effort? And, given that cost/benefit ratio, what are the actual use cases that make using it worthwhile?

So condescending. If it has no value in training then the resulting model is equally lacking in value.