One Hundred Percent AI

There was a dustup on social media today about writing with AI. 

Hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller used AI to write a big op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he criticized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. 

After people pointed out obvious linguistic patterns, Druckenmiller admitted he wrote it with AI, saying “there’s a reason I moved from an English major to an economics major.” 

Things got more interesting when Paul Gigot, editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page, defended the paper’s decision to run the essay, saying: “AI is a fact of modern life,” and "nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion.” 

Having spent most of my career in media, I suspect this was less of a principled stand and more of a response to the editorial cul-de-sac that they found themselves in. They couldn’t really blame Druckenmiller and they couldn’t pretend they didn’t know. 

I would however expect standards to be tightened considerably at the WSJ and every other paper such that even if AI was used - the actual writing is more defensible. 

Max Tani, media editor from Semafor, said it’s a “precedent-setting moment in the news media.” 

The reason he said that is that most major media outlets like the NYT and including the WSJ have standards that bar their reporters from publishing AI written stories. The FT, when facing a similar situation over an op-ed a week ago, backed down. 

Lots of people had lots of opinions on X, LinkedIn and elsewhere about whether you can or can’t use AI or it will or won’t become commonplace. 

I think it’s fair to assume it will be normalized over time and less of a big deal to use AI for many things, including business writing like op-eds. 

Having said that, I am more aligned with venture capitalist Paul Graham and others who argue that writing is thinking and that the effort you put into writing matters. 

Moreover, I think things that are written by humans will become over time more valued in the same way haute couture is for fashion and haute cuisine for food. 

We’ll call it haute content and it will flourish because it will be expensive and scarce. 

Also, from a purely practical point of view, most business executives don’t want to be the center of another media debate over writing, especially one that suggests you didn’t put in any effort to communicate something which you want people to believe. 

Proof of effort is one of the reasons we have seen the proliferation of insanely long essays by tech and financial leaders like Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Ackman. 

All of this should be good for editors and ghostwriters (like me) - if only to edit and proof AI written content to make sure it sounds like an actual human. 

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

AI DETECTION: While everyone wrings their hands about whether you should use AI to write, its good to remember that Google may arbitrarially decide how our writing gets disseminated whether we like it or not.

PEOPLE KEEP SMOKING LESS: A reminder that things can and do change - even habits enjoyed by almost half the population.

FLYING THE FLAG: Not sure what to make of this.

EVERYTHING IS MARKETING: Reminder of why people don’t like many influencers. They are marketing things without being honest about it.

POLISHED VS AUTHENTIC; WARM VS COLD: I found this framework helpful, but wished he had an axis for “effective.”

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