The Financial Times called out Harvard economics professor Ricardo Hausmann for using artificial intelligence in his op-ed criticizing President Donald Trump and his tariffs.
The British daily newspaper posted a disclaimer at the top of the opinion piece:
“It has come to our attention that Al 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 Al in the writing process.”
The Financial Times initially published the column without a disclaimer, and readers called out the newspaper for AI use.
“@FT should be embarrassed for publishing pure AI written slop,” one reader said in the story’s comment section. “Very concerning.”
“This is clearly AI,” another commenter wrote. “And the author should have just shared the prompt. It’s less disappointing than it used to be to see a Harvard-affiliated academic take a lazy shortcut, but I expect better of the FT.”
Users also criticized the piece for being poor quality and hard to read. One user called it “incomprehensible.” Another said “Don’t understand it. Call me thick. Was AI used? I think maybe.”
A third user wrote, “Seriously hard to follow.”
Hausmann, 70, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University, was born in Venezuela and previously served as the minister of planning for the Venezuelan government. He has been at Harvard for more than two decades and is the Rafik Hariri professor of the practice of international political economy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
While much of the criticism of AI in academia focuses on student use, professors are also clearly tempted to rely on chatbots.
“It’s going to be very difficult this academic year trying to encourage students to write persuasively with creativity, individuality, and style… when a star Econ professor at Harvard Kennedy School publishes such easily ID’ed AI slop in the Financial Times,” Michael Socolow, chair of the Department of Communications and Journalism at the University of Maine, wrote in a post on X.
