‘I’m not embarrassed by it’ says billionaire investor who used AI for WSJ critique of Scott Bessent. 'I write everything with AI now'

And, the billionaire businessman and investor isn’t at all ashamed of it.

“Of course I used AI…I’m not embarrassed by it,” Druckenmiller told reporters at Notus, joking about his switch from an English program to an economics major early in his academic career.

As the former long-time hedge fund manager sees it, using AI to write is akin to “using a calculator when I do math problems.”

“I write everything using AI now,” he explained.

More people in power use AI behind the scenes

Druckenmiller is far from the only figure of note to reveal their somewhat surprising use of the controversial tech for certain tasks. Pfizer CEO Albert Boula stated in an interview this spring that he bounces some of his most difficult and important business decisions off of chatbots, while Ryan Roslansky, the head of LinkedIn, says he relies on them to draft “high-stakes” email correspondence.

OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman has even suggested people use large language models like his company’s ChatGPT to parent their kids.

“Every morning for the drive to school, have [AI] make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.” he wrote in an X post in late July, which spawned a flurry of negative responses. (Top among them was “What if you just talked to your children?”)

WSJ’s and the public’s reaction

In Druckenmiller’s case, while some called the revelation “unforgivable,” the editor that published the column argued that “AI is a fact of modern life” that people will use “to assist in their work and their writing.”“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,” he said in a statement. For this critique, the editorial team felt that the answer was yes.

Some online users also questioned whether employing AI in such a situation is much different than hiring a speechwriter, ghostwriter or PR person for such a project, or than, say, using it for a cover letter, as many candidates now do.