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...
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...
04.02.2026 23:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0No - what does camera-ready submission mean?
24.01.2026 03:32 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Citation is the foundation of academic promotion. It’s noisy, sure, but its integrity is worth fighting for. Hallucinated citations should be a desk reject.
22.01.2026 01:16 — 👍 27 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0Wow, thanks Toby!
21.01.2026 23:15 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0In 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.
21.01.2026 22:48 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0I'm actually surprised it's not higher - it's not like reviewers and ACs are checking all the references.
21.01.2026 22:02 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
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?
21.01.2026 20:49 — 👍 125 🔁 24 💬 14 📌 2This 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!
21.01.2026 20:16 — 👍 9 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
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.
21.01.2026 14:16 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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.
27.12.2025 17:50 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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.
27.12.2025 17:20 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0At the center of the story is Anita Verma-Lallian, an Arizona land developer, daughter of Indian immigrants and Hollywood producer (who made headlines last year for buying the Pacific Palisades home of late Friends star Matthew Perry).
27.12.2025 17:20 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0NEW: A few weeks ago, I traveled to the desert outside Phoenix to report a story that’s a true microcosm of the AI data-center boom: Silicon Valley billions colliding with rural America, land, power, water, and local politics.
27.12.2025 17:20 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0Wow.
22.10.2025 17:47 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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...
This is a banger - Julia Black rocks
19.10.2025 20:32 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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 — how people are literally investing in a worldview about where AI is heading."
fortune.com/2025/10/08/l...
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 👇
fortune.com/2025/10/08/l...
