The Wall Street Journal ran a now-viral op-ed by the famed billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller on Monday evening titled “Let the Bond Market Speak.” The piece targeted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his decision to pursue a long-bond buybacks strategy. The targeting of the Treasury Secretary was notable because of Druckenmiller’s legendary credentials and because he was once Bessent’s boss and mentor at Soros Fund Management. But nobody is talking about the apparent Druckenmiller-Bessent ideological feud anymore, because of the more newsworthy revelation that the former’s entire column was generated by AI.
Not so long after the piece was published, journalists ran the column through Pangram, an AI-detection tool (which is also now embedded in Substack). The article received a 100% AI generated score.
When reached for comment, Druckenmiller doubled down on his use of AI. [Though I suppose he didn’t double down because he didn’t acknowledge it when the piece was published.] “Of course I used AI,” he said, adding that he’s “not embarrassed by it,” and that he now writes with AI “for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”
“My name is on the piece. It’s my message,” he declared.
Wall Street Journal opinion editor Paul Gigot, clearly put in an awkward position by editors who grossly failed him (given that the article was so clearly identifiable as AI), defended the piece. In a statement to the media, Gigot said “AI is a fact of modern life” and “nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion.”
The problem isn’t the use of AI. It’s that an S-tier media publication would have such low standards for the use of AI. I have no objection to writers using AI. I think it’s an excellent research assistant and productivity tool. It’s an even better editor for grammar, content, clarity, etc. If Druckenmiller had fed an initial prompt into Claude or GPT to start making his case, and then had his team do a little back and forth to tighten up his argument, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with what he did here.
Druckenmiller basically one-shotted the whole thing, as evidenced by his 100 percent AI score on Pangram and my understanding of what AI writing looks like. This thing wasn’t ever even touched by a human. This wasn’t even an “AI-assisted” piece. A prompt went in and the essay came out. There was no effort or energy dedicated to such a high-stakes op-ed.
Druckenmiller’s calculator analogy is clever but wrong. A calculator does not make an argument for you. It just computes math problems that would remain identical to the product that you would do by hand, just with a faster output through technology.
The op-ed blunder is the exact opposite of the calculator analogy. He basically licensed his name to a large language model and signed off on the result. Druckenmiller outsourced his own thinking to AI, but tried to keep the credit to himself.
I had an interesing back and forth with the chief economics correspondent of the Journal here:
I’m sure Druckenmiller really does believe that Bessent is wrong about bond buybacks and the like. He’s on CNBC all the time delivering similar sentiments, but it’s not an issue I’m super familiar with and the point of this discussion has nothing to do with the merits of the case. Nobody subscribes to the Wall Street Journal to read op-eds that kind of sort of capture the rudimentary sentiments of influential people. They read it because they want to absorb, digest, and distribute the high-level reasoning that makes its way to print.
The Wall Street Journal is making a mistake by legitimizing low-effort slop from high-status people who are trying to shape the public debate. This is the paper of record for American markets. Its editorial page should be a place where ideas are buttoned up and independent of an overreliance on software. Gigot shouldn’t accept a new standard that allows for influential people and organizations to deliver minimal effort, especially when they have incredible resources at their disposal to dedicate time and energy to the process of publishing an op-ed.
AI is a tool that when used well, can very much elevate published work and make it just as authentic as before. Used the way it was used here, it produces nothing more than slop.
Disgusting. If you're a writer, you write. Your own words. Your own thoughts. Your own experiences.
"Everybody else is doing it" isn't a great excuse -- especially when your entire industry is in free fall and being taken over by AI slop articles!
At least the "media" finally acknowledges just how completely irrelevant they have become.