Billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller has confirmed that his opinion essay published Monday by The Wall Street Journal was written using artificial intelligence.
The essay in question, “Let the Bond Market Speak,” questions U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s interventionist methods to manage U.S. treasury yields. After it was published, AI detection tool Pangram concluded that the op-ed had been penned using AI. When asked about those reports Tuesday by NOTUS, Druckenmiller said, “Of course I used AI.”
“There’s a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major,” Druckenmiller told the outlet. “I’m not embarrassed by it.” The hedge fund manager, who founded Duquesne Capital, added, “I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”
TheWrap has reached out to The Wall Street Journal for comment.
While economist Claudia Sahm posted on social media that her Pangram test on the op-ed found that “this entire text is AI,” Druckenmiller, who notably worked with Bessent and has previously been described as a “mentor” to the Trump appointee, said claims that “the whole thing” was written by AI were inaccurate. The billionaire reportedly claimed that he rejected many AI suggestions during the creation of the op-ed.
Druckenmiller went on to altogether dismiss concerns about his use of an AI tool to pen his op-ed. “I don’t know why this is relevant,” he told NOTUS. “My name is on the piece. It’s my message.”
Druckenmiller’s comments come at a time when the use of AI remains a hot topic of ethical and journalistic debate online. In March, the New York Times cut ties with freelancer Alex Preston after his book review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s “Watching Over Her” was found to have incorporated elements of a review of the same book published by The Guardian.
In that case, the New York Times launched an internal review of Preston’s work after it was flagged by a reader and the freelancer confirmed he had used an AI tool to help him draft his review. He said he had failed to catch the elements of the Guardian’s review in his before he submitted it to be published.
Popular YouTuber and author Hank Green also came under fire this year after fans accused him online of reading from an AI-generated script in a video discussing human language. While Green denied that particular claim, he admitted to having used AI in his research for the video.
Amid the growing wave of backlash that followed, Green not only penned a lengthy Reddit post unpacking his use of AI in his work but also announced he would be slowing down the production pipeline on his multiple channels.
He further assured viewers that no part of any of his video scripts will ever be written, edited or outlined by an AI model or that he will ever use AI-generated images or music in his posts.
Elsewhere, Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann published a column in the Financial Times earlier this month about President Trump’s tariff strategies. After it was published, the Financial Times added a note informing readers, “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.”
