A Harvard professor is facing backlash after an opinion piece he authored for the Financial Times, which criticized President Trump's tariffs, was found to have been substantially written by artificial intelligence. The Financial Times has since appended a disclaimer to the article.
The editorial note states that AI was utilized to condense a longer draft of the column prior to its submission and the newspaper's own editorial review. The Financial Times' code of conduct prohibits the use of AI in the writing process.
The op-ed drew attention on social media for its prose, with one user describing it as "the worst AI slop I’ve seen in a major publication." An AI detection tool, Pangram, reportedly indicated that the 841-word piece was 71% AI-generated.
Ricardo Hausmann, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and former Venezuelan minister, has been criticized by academics and commentators alike. Michael Socolow of the University of Maine expressed concern that such a development would make it difficult to encourage students to develop persuasive and original writing when a prominent academic allegedly used AI for his work.
Joe Weisenthal of Bloomberg, who stated he had previously learned from and enjoyed discussions with Hausmann, called the situation "astonishing" in terms of both its writing and publication.
Hausmann, 70, has not immediately responded to requests for comment. Representatives for the Financial Times and the Harvard Kennedy School were also approached for comment.