A Harvard professor is facing scrutiny after critics alleged that a Financial Times opinion piece he authored criticizing President Trump was largely produced with artificial intelligence, with some online commentators dismissing it as “slop.”
The column, written by Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan government minister and Harvard Kennedy School academic, was published Thursday and has since been updated with an editor’s note from the FT.
“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 note at the top of the article states.
“The FT editorial code of conduct specifically prohibits the use of AI in the writing process,” the statement adds.
The disclosure followed a wave of criticism on social media, where readers flagged the op-ed — which took aim at Trump’s tariffs — for prose they described as awkward and unnaturally polished.
“Gotta be the worst AI slop I’ve seen in a major publication,” one user wrote on X.
Another X user posted a screenshot from the AI-detection tool Pangram, which estimated that 71% of the 841-word article had been generated by artificial intelligence.
The episode has struck a nerve in academic circles, arriving as universities continue to grapple with rising student use of AI tools for coursework — making the suggestion that a senior Harvard Kennedy School figure relied on the technology especially troubling to critics.
“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,” bemoaned Michael Socolow of the University of Maine in a social media post.
Even fans of Hausmann’s work appeared horrified that such a respected economist would use AI to write an article, which was then placed behind a paywall.
Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal described how he had “learned a lot” from Hausmann and “enjoyed talking with him” in the past in a post on X.
“I find this astonishing, both in its writing and its publication,” he added.
Hausmann, 70, a former government minister in his native Venezuela, did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The Financial Times and the Harvard Kennedy School were also approached for comment.
