After the attack on Sam Altman, anti-AI groups took center stage. I took a closer look at two of them, Pause AI and Stop AI, this week for Fortune. (gift link: sharongoldman.substack.com/p/after-the-...)
Some included details:
Pause AI and Stop AI: Meet the anti-AI groups facing questions after the attack on Sam Altman
fortune.com/2026/04/15/p...
People will read 4000 words — or at least try — when it’s the kind of reporting they can’t get anywhere else. Books didn’t disappear, and neither will deeply-reported stories that have some real non-AI effort attached to them.
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
It is amazing that 2 or 3 years ago (maybe even 1?) no one would have written this story or been willing to speak on the record
www.wired.com/story/tech-r...
NEW: Meta’s $27 billion AI data center is causing chaos in small town Louisiana
I spent several days on the ground in Richland Parish last month, where a massive Meta AI data center is rising. The area has become a chaotic boomtown—with both winners and losers.
fortune.com/2026/03/26/m...
Even with all the news dropping in AI this week, my Fortune editors were kind enough to let me go on an extended reporting trip for the series on the mega AI data center boom I’ve been working on. Here's a free preview:
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
BREAKING: OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about surveillance and autonomous weapons amid Pentagon contract
fortune.com/2026/03/07/o...
BREAKING: Sam Altman told OpenAI employees at an all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon that a potential agreement is emerging with the Dept of War to use the startup’s AI models. The contract has not yet been signed.
fortune.com/2026/02/27/o...
On Monday, AI influencer and CEO Matt Shumer reached out to say he was writing an article to explain to the average person “what’s going on in AI and how it’s going to affect them.”
Here's what happened next.
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
NEW: Just back from Richland Parish, Louisiana, where former cotton and soybean fields are now Meta’s Hyperion AI data center.
It’s so big it has its own road: Far Far Away Lane.
But this isn’t a galaxy far away — it’s right here in the U.S. More soon.
sharongoldman.substack.com/p/reporting-...
Scoop: I learned Meta has quietly purchased roughly 1,400 acres—nearly 2X size of Manhattan’s Central Park—next to its 2,250-acre Hyperion AI data center site in Richland Parish, La., Fortune has learned. I also observed active work underway on the newly acquired land.
fortune.com/2026/02/04/m...
Meta has quietly purchased roughly 1,400 acres—an area almost twice the size of Manhattan’s Central Park—adjacent to its already-mammoth 2,250-acre Hyperion AI data center site in Richland Parish, La., Fortune has learned. fortune.com/2026/02/04/m...
No - what does camera-ready submission mean?
Citation is the foundation of academic promotion. It’s noisy, sure, but its integrity is worth fighting for. Hallucinated citations should be a desk reject.
Wow, thanks Toby!
In mid-2025 I reported fake references in a 2023 paper to NeurIPS Ethics and Grievances Committee. They said they had contacted the authors, who apologized & sent a corrected version. This story prompted me to check the NeurIPS proceedings, and it's still the original, uncorrected pdf.
I'm actually surprised it's not higher - it's not like reviewers and ACs are checking all the references.
What is wild to me is the defense, BY THE NEURIPS BOARD, that fabricated citations do not mean "the content of the papers themselves [is] necessarily invalidated"
It does. It very much does. What do you think citing other work is for? What do you think writing a paper is for? What do you *think*?
NeurIPS reviewers typically review 6+ papers, each with 100 or so citations. The reviewers can't possibly check that every citation is real. But why don't we have an automated way to do this checking (and desk-rejecting if fake citations found) *before* the papers are sent to reviewers?
This community knows just how unreliable AI sourcing is, and yet. The cognitive bias toward trusting these things is so strong even the people who should really, really know better can't help themselves. Which means you (and I) probably can't either. Be careful out there, knowledge workers!
Accurate and thorough representation of prior and related work is one of the cornerstones of good research.
It is shocking to me that so many published NeurIPS papers, even from top institutions, have fabricated references.
I recommend reading the original report: gptzero.me/news/neurips/
The disparity between fields and rigor of peer-review is wild. I've been scrutinized for citing the wrong edition of a particular book, meanwhile some people are just having AI write the whole damn lit review apparently.
NEW: NeurIPS,one of the world’s top academic AI conferences, accepted research papers with 100+ AI-hallucinated citations, new report claims
fortune.com/2026/01/21/n...
I’ve been covering AI as a daily beat since April 2022.
From the start, the AI beat felt more fast-paced than anything I had covered in more than two decades as a journalist, writer, and editor.
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
We talk about AI in abstractions — compute, scale, trillions.
But on the ground, it’s about water, land, noise, jobs, and who gets a say.
I spent time in the Arizona desert reporting on what the AI data center boom looks like up close.
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
That tension's the real story behind the tech headlines.
My latest feature for Fortune looks at the collision of all these factors — and what it says about where the AI boom is headed next.
Check out the full story for some holiday weekend reading! fortune.com/2025/12/27/a...
Its few hundred human residents were largely drawn by the tranquility and clear skies for stargazing.
The piece is about the physical footprint of AI: massive data centers, the energy they demand, and the local communities asked to absorb that transformation.
Together with investors like billionaire VC Chamath Palihapitiya, she is planning to build a massive AI data center on 2000 acres at Hassayampa Ranch, 50 miles west of Phoenix, which is dotted with saguaro cacti and home to coyotes, jackrabbits, and rattlesnakes.