Sharon Goldman
@sharongoldman.bsky.social
đ€ 1734
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Fortune reporter covering AI
[email protected]
pinned post!
My latest feature for Fortune looks at the collision of all these factors â 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...
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At the edges of the AI data center boom, rural America is up against Silicon Valley billions | Fortune
When a multibillion-dollar AI data center proposal pitted developers against a handful of rural Arizona residents, the locals were outgunned and outvoted.
https://fortune.com/2025/12/27/ai-data-centers-arizona-hassayampa-ranch/
4 months ago
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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:
6 days ago
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Pause AI and Stop AI: Meet the anti-AI groups facing questions after the attack on Sam Altman
fortune.com/2026/04/15/p...
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The Sam Altman attack is putting two anti-AI groups under scrutinyâbut the story is more complicated | Fortune
After an alleged attack on Sam Altmanâs home, attention has turned to two similarly named anti-AI groupsâhereâs how they differ, and why both are facing scrutiny.
https://fortune.com/2026/04/15/pause-ai-and-stop-ai-meet-the-anti-ai-groups-facing-questions-after-the-attack-on-sam-altman/
10 days ago
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People will read 4000 words â or at least try â when itâs the kind of reporting they canât get anywhere else. Books didnât disappear, and neither will deeply-reported stories that have some real non-AI effort attached to them.
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
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What 4000 words on a Meta AI data center says about journalism right now
In an era of AI-generated everything, the value of being there in person is only increasing
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/what-4000-words-on-a-meta-ai-data?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
27 days ago
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How AI is affecting journalism was big news this week. My take:
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
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What 4000 words on a Meta AI data center says about journalism right now
In an era of AI-generated everything, the value of being there in person is only increasing
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/what-4000-words-on-a-meta-ai-data?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
28 days ago
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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...
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Meet the Tech Reporters Using AI to Help Write and Edit Their Stories
Independent writers are using AI agents all throughout their reporting process. Whatâs the value of a human journalist, anyway?
https://www.wired.com/story/tech-reporters-using-ai-write-edit-stories/
about 1 month ago
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NEW: Metaâs $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 boomtownâwith both winners and losers.
fortune.com/2026/03/26/m...
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Meta's $27 billion AI data center is causing chaos in small town Louisiana | Fortune
In an era of globalization and corporate consolidation, the âpick-and-shovelâ ripple spreads very differently. Itâs testing assumptions about who actually benefits when a mega-project arrives in town.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/26/meta-ai-data-center-hyperion-louisiana/?sge456
about 1 month ago
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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 Iâve been working on. Here's a free preview:
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
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On the road again, following the AI data center trail
From Michigan to Texas, two more rural communities grappling with mega AI data centers planned for their farmland
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/on-the-road-again-following-the-ai?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
about 1 month ago
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BREAKING: OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about surveillance and autonomous weapons amid Pentagon contract
fortune.com/2026/03/07/o...
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OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about surveillance and autonomous weapons amid Pentagon contract | Fortune
A senior OpenAI robotics leader says she left over concerns about surveillance and autonomous weapons as the company expands its work with the Pentagon.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/07/openai-robotics-leader-caitlin-kalinowski-resignation-pentagon-surveillance-autonomous-weapons-anthropic/
about 2 months ago
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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 startupâs AI models. The contract has not yet been signed.
fortune.com/2026/02/27/o...
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OpenAI is negotiating with the U.S. government, Sam Altman tells staff | Fortune
The negotiations come as rival Anthropic is locked in a more contentious standoff with U.S. defense officials.
https://fortune.com/2026/02/27/openai-in-talks-with-pentagon-after-anthropic-blowup/
about 2 months ago
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On Monday, AI influencer and CEO Matt Shumer reached out to say he was writing an article to explain to the average person âwhatâs going on in AI and how itâs going to affect them.â Here's what happened next.
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
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Matt Shumer reached out to me before publishing his viral essay. I'm glad I waited to read it.
"Something Big Is Happeningâ racked up over 75 million viewsâbut itâs a breathless argument built on shaky assumptions, and it shows how hard itâs becoming to separate signal from hype in AI discourse
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/matt-shumer-reached-out-to-me-ahead?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
2 months ago
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NEW: Just back from Richland Parish, Louisiana, where former cotton and soybean fields are now Metaâs Hyperion AI data center. Itâs so big it has its own road: Far Far Away Lane. But this isnât a galaxy far away â itâs right here in the U.S. More soon.
sharongoldman.substack.com/p/reporting-...
3 months ago
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Scoop: I learned Meta has quietly purchased roughly 1,400 acresânearly 2X size of Manhattanâs Central Parkânext 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...
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Meta is quietly expanding its $10 billion Hyperion AI data center, now sprawling to four times the size of Manhattanâs Central Park | Fortune
Metaâs latest 1,400-acre land deal in Louisiana signals plans for a vast, multiphase AI campus unlike anything the U.S. has seen.
https://fortune.com/2026/02/04/meta-hyperion-ai-data-center-louisiana-expansion/
3 months ago
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Meta has quietly purchased roughly 1,400 acresâan area almost twice the size of Manhattanâs Central Parkâadjacent 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...
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Meta is quietly expanding its $10 billion Hyperion AI data center, now sprawling to four times the size of Manhattanâs Central Park | Fortune
Metaâs latest 1,400-acre land deal in Louisiana signals plans for a vast, multiphase AI campus unlike anything the U.S. has seen.
https://fortune.com/2026/02/04/meta-hyperion-ai-data-center-louisiana-expansion/
3 months ago
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
David Mimno
3 months ago
Citation is the foundation of academic promotion. Itâs noisy, sure, but its integrity is worth fighting for. Hallucinated citations should be a desk reject.
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Wow, thanks Toby!
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3 months ago
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Peter Vamplew
3 months ago
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.
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Sharon Goldman
Blake Richards
3 months ago
I'm actually surprised it's not higher - it's not like reviewers and ACs are checking all the references.
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Clément Canonne
3 months ago
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*?
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Melanie Mitchell
3 months ago
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?
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Kevin Bankston
3 months ago
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!
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Martin Trapp
3 months ago
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/
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Taylor Beauvais
3 months ago
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.
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NEW: NeurIPS,one of the worldâs top academic AI conferences, accepted research papers with 100+ AI-hallucinated citations, new report claims
fortune.com/2026/01/21/n...
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NeurIPS papers contained 100+ AI-hallucinated citations, new report claims | Fortune
An analysis of NeurIPS 2025 papers by startup GPTZero reveals how AI-generated citations are slipping into elite academic research.
https://fortune.com/2026/01/21/neurips-ai-conferences-research-papers-hallucinations
3 months ago
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Iâve 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...
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The AI industry is moving faster than journalism can follow
What itâs like to report on a beat that never slowsâand may be outrunning the people trying to explain it
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/the-ai-industry-is-moving-faster?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
4 months ago
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We talk about AI in abstractions â compute, scale, trillions. But on the ground, itâs 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...
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Reporting From the Front Lines of the AI Data Center Boom
On the ground 50 miles west of Phoenix, where the race for compute collides with a rural community
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/reporting-from-the-front-lines-of?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
4 months ago
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Nova The Machine
4 months ago
That tension's the real story behind the tech headlines.
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NEW: A few weeks ago, I traveled to the desert outside Phoenix to report a story thatâs a true microcosm of the AI data-center boom: Silicon Valley billions colliding with rural America, land, power, water, and local politics.
4 months ago
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open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
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Why I really pushed to talk to OpenAI's Greg Brockman for my latest Fortune story
Hint: I can think of $1.4 trillion worth of reasons
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/why-i-really-pushed-to-talk-to-openais?r=9xkx3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
6 months ago
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NEW: AI data centers have suddenly become one of the most potent political flashpoints of 2025, igniting fierce debates over power, water, land, and jobs.
fortune.com/2025/10/22/a...
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Huge AI data centers are turning local elections into fights over the future of energy | Fortune
Rising energy bills and growing scrutiny of Big Techâs political influence are transforming AI data centers from obscure infrastructure into political flashpoints for both progressives and conservativ...
https://fortune.com/2025/10/22/ai-data-centers-politics-elections-energy/
6 months ago
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
MirandaPitcher
7 months ago
From Fortune reporter
@sharongoldman.bsky.social
's email announcing this story: "Reporting the story, what struck me most is how belief itself has become a form of capital â how people are literally investing in a worldview about where AI is heading."
fortune.com/2025/10/08/l...
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How former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner turned a viral AI prophecy into profit, with a $1.5 billion hedge fund and outsize influence from Silicon Valley to D.C. | Fortune
Aschenbrenner is a Wall Street novice. So why have some of Silicon Valleyâs biggest names trusted him to manage billions?
https://fortune.com/2025/10/08/leopold-aschenbrenner-openai-ftx-1-5-billion-hedge-fund-situational-awareness/?j=61888&sfmc_sub=15935681&l=1584_HTML&u=4087780&mid=546014653&jb=24&utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NL_eye-on-ai_2025-10-9_61888&sfmc_id=15935681
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How a 23-year old former OpenAI researcher turned a viral AI prophecy into profit, with a $1.5 billion hedge fund and outsized influence from Silicon Valley to D.C. I spent several weeks reporting on the unlikely rise of Leopold Aschenbrenner đ
fortune.com/2025/10/08/l...
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How former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner turned a viral AI prophecy into profit, with a $1.5 billion hedge fund and outsized influence from Silicon Valley to D.C. | Fortune
Aschenbrenner is a Wall Street novice. So why have some of Silicon Valley's biggest names trusted him to manage billions?
https://fortune.com/2025/10/08/leopold-aschenbrenner-openai-ftx-1-5-billion-hedge-fund-situational-awareness/?utm_content=socialShare_null&utm_medium=x&utm_campaign=social_share
7 months ago
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7 months ago
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Many assume C2PA fights deepfakes. But a new report from the World Privacy Forum says it doesnât â instead itâs building a vast metadata system that raises thorny questions about privacy & who gets to count as âtrusted. Thanks to
@katekaye.bsky.social
for chatting!
fortune.com/2025/09/18/b...
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7 months ago
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It's a podcast world (I regularly think about being at the crazy AI Action Plan rollout a couple of months ago with the All-In bros where JD Vance sat on a couch with them and later the whole thing was rolled away to make way for Trump and his lectern and American flags )
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7 months ago
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"Person says: "So you mean, they're like dumb animals". Me: "HOW DARE YOU SIR ANIMALS EXHIBIT RICH MORAL SENSIBILITIES BACK AWAY FROM MY OTTERS AND TURTLES" (ok maybe I didn't quite say it that way)" Yaaaas
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8 months ago
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Most AI red teams break models. Anthropicâs Frontier Red Team also evangelizes the risks of AI itself â a rare hybrid of security + policy. I did a deep dive on this unusual group that sits in Anthropic's policy organization under co-founder Jack Clark.
fortune.com/2025/09/04/a...
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Inside Anthropic's 'Red Team'âensuring Claude is safe, and that Anthropic is heard in the corridors of power
Unique among AI labs, Anthropic's "Frontier Red Team" reports to its policy chief and has a mandate to publicize the dangers it finds
https://fortune.com/2025/09/04/anthropic-red-team-pushes-ai-models-into-the-danger-zone-and-burnishes-companys-reputation-for-safety/
8 months ago
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
David Brody
8 months ago
âLate last year, David Shor, one of the Democratic Partyâs top data scientists, surveyed some 130,000 voters about whether they had a âfavorableâ or âunfavorableâ opinion of Jewish people. Hardly anyone over the age of 70 said their view was unfavorable. More than a quarter of those under 25 did.â
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The MAGA Influencers Rehabilitating Hitler
A growing constituency on the right wants America to unlearn the lessons of World War II.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/maga-hitler-anti-semitism/684078/
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Yes amen exactly this
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8 months ago
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NEW: Chinaâs DeepSeek quietly released an open-source rival to GPT-5 â optimized for Chinese chips and priced to undercut OpenAI. Here's what that means and why that's a big deal.
fortune.com/2025/08/21/c...
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Chinaâs DeepSeek just dropped a new GPT-5 rival â optimized for Chinese chips, priced to undercut OpenAI
DeepSeek's new V3.1 model debuts several design innovations and highlights the intensity of the U.S.-China AI rivalry
https://fortune.com/2025/08/21/china-deepseek-releases-open-source-v3-1-model-to-rival-openai-gpt-5/
8 months ago
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Superintelligence, shmooperintelligence - for Meta, it's still always going to be about ad revenue, which is, hello, like 98% of revenue đ€·ââïž
fortune.com/2025/08/20/m...
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Meta wants to speed its race to âsuperintelligenceâ â but investors will still want their billions in ad revenue
Even as Meta reorganizes once more to chase AI âsuperintelligence,â the companyâs core business still lives and dies by advertising revenue
https://fortune.com/2025/08/20/meta-ai-race-superintelligence-investors-billions-in-ad-revenue/
8 months ago
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I was not invited to Sam Altmanâs cozy dinner with reporters in San Francisco last week (whomp whomp), but maybe thatâs for the best. I have trouble suppressing exasperated eye rolls when I hear peak Silicon Valleyâironic statements.
fortune.com/2025/08/19/s...
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Sam Altmanâs AI paradox: Warning of a bubble while raising trillions
Sam Altman says AI might be in a bubbleâthen touts trillions for OpenAIâs buildout. Call it the paradox powering Silicon Valleyâs biggest spending spree.
https://fortune.com/2025/08/19/sam-altmans-open-ai-paradox-warning-of-ai-bubble-while-raising-trillions/
8 months ago
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reposted by
Sharon Goldman
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
8 months ago
this is very interesting. I do wonder how much the tamper-proofing can survive extreme attacks, but it's encouraging. 1/2
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Thanks to
@stellaathena.bsky.social
for chatting with me about Deep Ignorance: the new paper/project from Eleuther AI and the UK AISI. Bottom line: Worried AI could teach people to build bioweapons? Donât teach it how
fortune.com/2025/08/14/w...
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AI safety tip: if you donât want it giving bioweapon instructions, maybe donât put them in the training data, say researchers
New research shows that scrubbing risky material from AI training data can build safeguards that are harder to bypass â and one author calls out tech giants for keeping such work under wraps.
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/worried-ai-could-teach-people-to-build-bioweapons-dont-teach-it-how-say-researchers/
8 months ago
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NEW: OpenAI's GPT-5 was supposed to be a leap forward. Instead, it sparked backlash, raising questions about whether the model router is the path to AI's future (hint: many say it still is)
fortune.com/2025/08/12/o...
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Why GPT-5âs most controversial feature â the model router â might also be the future of AI
OpenAIâs latest upgrade was supposed to be a leap forward. Instead, it sparked backlash â and raises big questions about whether stitching together multiple models is the path to AIâs future.
https://fortune.com/2025/08/12/openai-gpt-5-model-router-backlash-ai-future/
9 months ago
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Um wasn't Leopold Aschenbremmer focused on AI safety đ± 23-year-old former OpenAI Super alignment team guy running an AI focused hedge fund đź
t.co/9k28gT4HKd
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https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/billions-flow-to-new-hedge-funds-focused-on-ai-related-bets-48d97f41?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAiB1inpp_vW376mT8ouhsXkO-B5rnY42DVSSYDoyAlzJK2zUBMXlngJIIC_ns8%3D&gaa_...
https://t.co/9k28gT4HKd
9 months ago
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Mark Zuckerberg is pouring billions of dollars into AI âsuperintelligenceââso why does today's Instagram pitch feel so underwhelming? Kind of like a legless metaverse avatar? đââïž
fortune.com/2025/07/30/m...
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Mark Zuckerberg is pouring billions into superintelligenceâso why does his Instagram pitch feel so underwhelming?
The Meta founder and CEO mostly seems to want to sell more Ray Bans.
https://fortune.com/2025/07/30/mark-zuckerberg-meta-billions-ai-superintelligence-instagram-pitch-underwhelming/
9 months ago
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NEW: Silicon Valleyâs elite descend on D.C. to celebrate Trumpâs AI Action Plan in a surreal fusion of podcast and policy (oh, and Trump ran so long I missed my train back from DC đ)
fortune.com/2025/07/23/a...
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Podcast, policy, and pomp in D.C. at the surreal celebration of Trumpâs AI Action Plan
David Sacks, Trumpâs AI czar, shared the stage with his cohosts from the All-in podcast on Wednesday, walking through various elements of the new 28-page AI Action Plan.
https://fortune.com/2025/07/23/all-in-podcast-trump-ai-action-plan-david-sacks-jd-vance-jensen-huang/
9 months ago
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NEW: I chatted with ex-OpenAI researcher Steven Adler this week about role-playing a 'rogue' AI (he says we should all try it) đ”âđ«https://fortune.com/2025/06/26/former-openai-researcher-thinks-its-time-to-war-game-ai-superintelligence-scenarios/
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This former OpenAI researcher thinks we should be gaming out the AI apocalypse
Former OpenAI safety researcher Steven Adler explains why he thinks more people should 'wargame' AI superintelligence scenarios.
https://fortune.com/2025/06/26/former-openai-researcher-thinks-its-time-to-war-game-ai-superintelligence-scenarios/
10 months ago
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In the billionaires-are-not-relatable category: very weird emailing with Lucy Guo to check that she did, in fact, receive $650M in cash from the Meta/Scale deal and her responding that she did, in fact, receive $750M đ
open.substack.com/pub/sharongo...
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6 things I learned after spending a week writing a story about Scale AI's Alexandr Wang
Often one of the great pleasures of writing is the process of researching and crafting a story.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sharongoldman/p/6-things-i-learned-after-spending?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9xkx3
10 months ago
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I was in DC this week. Hereâs the takeaway: Big AI isnât just knocking on Washingtonâs doorâitâs moved in. OpenAI models on govât supercomputers. Metaâs Llama for defense. Anthropic building tools for national security. And Eric Schmidt? Playing matchmaker. My latest:
fortune.com/2025/06/05/b...
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From Silicon Valley to the Pentagon: Big AI is going full Beltway
In Washingtonâs new AI universe, national security and corporate AI ambitions are fusingâreshaping policy, procurement, and the global balance of power.
https://fortune.com/2025/06/05/big-ai-eric-schmidt-lobbying-washington/
11 months ago
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