A billionaire acknowledged on Tuesday that his widely read opinion column in The Wall Street Journal criticizing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bond market intervention was written using artificial intelligence.
Stanley Druckenmiller, a former hedge fund manager who founded Duquesne Capital, published “Let the Bond Market Speak” on Monday, questioning Bessent’s interventions to hold down yields on U.S. treasuries. The article drew added attention because Druckenmiller worked with Bessent under George Soros, and is sometimes described as a “mentor” to the treasury secretary.
Pangram, an AI detection tool, found that Druckenmiller’s op-ed had been written using artificial intelligence, according to multiple social media posts. In an interview with NOTUS, Druckenmiller said “of course I used AI” when writing the column, and argued he didn’t see a problem with doing so.
“There’s a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major,” Druckenmiller said. “I’m not embarrassed by it … I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”
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In a statement, Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor for The Wall Street Journal, defended Druckenmiller.
“AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing and more,” Gigot said. “The question for us is whether what we publish from contributors reflects an author’s original argument, and if the author has the standing and credibility to make it. In Stan Druckenmiller’s case, we have had a relationship with him for many years, and nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion.”
The use of AI by economists and other experts in writing opinion pieces has gained renewed scrutiny as the tool has become more widely used.
Earlier this month, Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann published a column in the Financial Times about Trump’s tariff regime. The column appeared laced with AI-inflected language, and the Financial Times later appended a note saying: “It has come to our attention that AI was used to condense a longer draft of this column prior to submission to the FT and our own editorial involvement. The FT editorial code of conduct specifically prohibits the use of AI in the writing process.”
Druckenmiller’s op-ed also included numerous phrases that sound like writing generated by AI, including: “There is a quieter cost, too” and “This wasn’t liquidity management, it was price management.”
A Pangram test posted on social media by the economist Claudia Sahm found that “100 percent of this text is AI.” Druckenmiller denied that “the whole thing” was written with AI and said that he rejected many of the AI’s suggestions during the writing process.
Some media experts have expressed concern about the proliferation of the tool. Chris Roberts, an associate professor at the University of Alabama specializing in journalism ethics, said “using AI raises questions about how much time and thought actually went into the piece.”
“We see a ton of this. We’re going to see more of this,” Roberts said. “Any time you take humans out of the process of communicating to other humans there can be blowback when the words or the intent is wrong, or it doesn’t sound like a human.”
Druckenmiller dismissed the use of the tool as unimportant because the op-ed reflected his intended meaning.
“I don’t know why this is relevant,” Druckenmiller said. “My name is on the piece. It’s my message.”
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