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This week on The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal sits down with veteran AI journalist and former Fortune reporter Sharon Goldman to discuss the growing disconnect between AI’s promise and public perception. As Sharon launches her new Substack, Ground Level AI, she shares why she’s shifting her focus away from model releases and Silicon Valley headlines to examine how AI is impacting communities, businesses, governments, and everyday people.
“To say you’re covering AI today is like boiling the ocean.” — Sharon Goldman
From AI data centers and cybersecurity risks to job displacement fears, media disruption, and public trust, Sharon offers a grounded perspective on where the AI conversation is headed next.
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What we cover
• Why AI companies are struggling to win public trust
• The growing backlash against AI and what’s driving it
• How data centers, infrastructure, and policy are becoming major AI stories
• Whether AI’s impact on jobs is being overstated
• The future of journalism in an AI-powered information ecosystem
• Why independent voices matter more than ever in technology reporting
• How Sharon uses AI as a reporting partner, editor, and research assistant
• The biggest AI stories to watch heading into 2027
If AI is reshaping society, who gets to tell that story? Sharon Goldman believes the most important AI stories are not found in the latest model release or product announcement. They are happening in communities, workplaces, governments, and everyday life, where technology is creating real-world impact.
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Why this matters
AI is no longer just a technology story. It is influencing how businesses operate, how information is distributed, how governments make decisions, and how communities adapt to rapid change. Understanding AI’s real-world impact is becoming just as important as understanding the technology itself. As adoption accelerates and public skepticism grows, the conversation is shifting from what AI can do to how it affects people, jobs, infrastructure, and society as a whole.
About the 👤 Guest
About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started.
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Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso
Edited by the Musso Media Team
Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0
All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026
TMC- TRANSCRIPT SHARON GOLDMAN
Pete Pachal (00:19.51)
Hi, welcome to the Media Copilot. It’s a podcast about how AI is changing media, news, and communication. I’m your host, Pete Paschel. I covered tech for a long time as a journalist, and now I have deep conversations with media people, with builders, and with creators who are all answering the question how will we get information in the future? And how will that change the jobs and the industries whose business is information, especially media? My guest today is Sharon Goldman.
Sharon has been one of the most thoughtful reporters covering AI, most recently at Fortune, where her work has gone well beyond product launches and model rankings. She’s covered AI as a business story, an infrastructure story, a labor story, a security story, a policy story, and increasingly as a story about power. Who controls the systems, who pays for them, and who has to live with the consequences. Now Sharon’s moving into a new chapter. She’s leaving Fortune to launch ground level AI.
A publication focused on AI as it meets the real world. Infrastructure, geopolitics, societal issues like jobs and the environment, all the messy parts that don’t fit neatly into a press release. So today we’re going to talk about what she’s learned from covering AI up close, where what she thinks the industry still gets wrong, how the public’s responding to AI, and what all this means for media, journalism, and our information ecosystem before we get into that though, please just take a second to rate or review the show if you can. If you’re listening on Apple or Spotify, please leave a five-star review. Or if you can, maybe a nice comment. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe to the channel if you don’t mind. Those things really do help people find the show. All right, housekeeping over. Sharon, welcome to the Media Copilot.
Sharon Goldman (02:10.748)
thank you so much, Pete. Thanks for having me.
Pete Pachal (02:14.237)
Awesome. So before we get into all the things that I was promising there, I’d love to hear just a little bit more about you, your background. I know you’ve been covering AT A AI for quite a while, not just at Fortune, but other publications. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into journalism and how you got into AI reporting.
Sharon Goldman (02:30.584)
Well, as far as getting into AI reporting, that started in April 2022. So a little bit over four years ago, I was hired at a publication called Venture Beat. And the week that I started, the person covering AI left to go to TechCrunch. And I raised my hand and I said, Well, I’ll cover AI full-time as my daily beat. And that was six months before ChatGPT came out, and I’ve been on a roller coaster ride ever since.
Pete Pachal (02:55.533)
Well timed.
Sharon Goldman (02:58.776)
As far as my journalism career, I’ve been in the business for over 25 years. I started out in B2B journalism in subjects completely unrelated to technology. But about 15 years ago, I did start covering technology from the standpoint of marketing tech and sales tech, when Salesforce first came into the picture, when SEO was new, when social media was new. So I feel like I’ve
Pete Pachal (03:26.389)
Well those are the days.
Sharon Goldman (03:27.788)
Those were the days and I feel like I’ve constantly been on this trajectory of of being at sort of on the front lines of when some of these technologies got started and that always floats my boat. So it’s been a really fun and exciting journey that I’m thrilled to continue.
Pete Pachal (03:47.266)
Yeah, it’s pretty wild to know s note how much all of that stuff has changed as you were sort of describing all those areas. And AI, of course, is like always changing. Like I feel like, you know, everything changes, but like, holy cow, is it so different from when you first started it, even in 2022? So, you know, tell us about like what you’re doing now, because you’re leaving fortune to start this new publication, ground level AI. What made you decide like this was the moment here in 2026 to do that?
Sharon Goldman (04:13.196)
I feel like there were a few things converging for me. For one thing, it’s kind of in my DNA to be a bit of a builder. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial bent. Before I started covering AI as a full-time daily beat for venture beat and then fortune, I actually was a freelancer for over 10 years. and I was very successful doing it. I really loved it. I loved that kind of autonomy and sort of building a business on my own.
So I feel like it’s a little bit going back to my natural habitat in that regard. I also feel like the timing is really right. This is such a momentous societal shift that deserves all kinds of coverage. You know, I feel like a lot of coverage right now, you know, really hones in on the biggest companies, the biggest models, you know, the the the gossip, the drama.
But you know, I’m really interested in digging into it’s such a broad beat at this point. Like to say you’re covering AI is like boiling the ocean. So I feel that there’s a gap, you know, in being able to narrow that down to some of the things I’m most interested in. And, you know, after, you know, over two decades in the industry, I feel like I have a voice, I have a point of view that I’d really like to.
get across. And I finally I feel that there needs to be more independent female tech voices out there in the independent journalism ecosystem. And you know, I’m definitely ready to jump in on that.
Pete Pachal (05:48.77)
Nice. So you described, I think, ground level AI as like it’s AI meets the real world, right? And what what does that mean in practice? It seems like that’s a good reflection, I think, of like a lot of your coverage of fortune, which talks about like, you know, these ground level consequences of data centers, the skepticism around it, et cetera. are are you gonna continue in that vein? does it change at all? Do you add to it? How is how is ground level AI gonna cover AI in the real world.
Sharon Goldman (06:19.862)
Yeah, so AI in the real world can can seem a bit vague. To me, it’s really about this societal shift that we’re seeing right now. And that, you know, is physically when it comes to data centers, and we’re seeing, you know, a tremendous build-out, but also a tremendous backlash. And when those two things converge, you know, there’s a lot going on. I also see it as far as you know, just policy, how governments and organizations are going to handle this shift going forward when it comes to issues like labor, when it comes to issues like safety. You know, that’s everywhere right now. With a big election coming up in November, I’m really eager to dig into that. I’m also keenly aware of security issues that are every single enterprise is needing to invest in this right now with anthropics mythos.
You know, kind of changing the game and giving enterprise companies a wake up call about what they need to do in their organizations to make their systems secure. I think that’s the real world too. That’s ground level change and that’s what I really want to dig in into.
Pete Pachal (07:36.344)
Yeah, and also feel like you mentioned the election there in terms of AI meeting the real world. You know, I feel like that’s actually happening in a sort of mainstream consciousness way, right, in this moment too. And I’d love to to get your thoughts on, you know, the public’s relationship with AI, which, you know, certainly in recent months has seemingly taken a turn for the negative. there’s been a lot of shall we say skepticism about AI that’s gone mainstream. You know, there’s the the infamous graduation speech I guess trend that that where people would mention AI and get booed. I’d love to get your sort of initial thoughts on that and let’s let’s sort of double click on a few.
Sharon Goldman (08:18.86)
I feel like I’ve been beating this drum for quite a while. A few years ago I was starting to write essays and and analysis pieces where I the communications piece has got to get better, I think, from the AI company standpoint, if they want the public to get on board. You know, you can’t, in my opinion, say in the media that you know, half of all white collar jobs are gonna go away by this time and then expect everyone to be excited about the photos and images and and writing that they’re doing using their tools. So I feel like there’s a tremendous disconnect. you know, and then where is the public getting their information from? You know, they’re certainly getting news from social media and there’s a tremendous backlash on social media to AI, whether it’s from the data center standpoint, whether it’s job loss. Also just I feel like there’s a bit of a disconnect, partly because it’s how the technology is. It’s these use cases now, whether it’s writing or coding, these are not the world-changing use cases that people would like to hear to think that they have to suffer for it.
If AI really was, for example, curing cancer, well, that would be a different story. But if it’s simply making your enterprise workflows better or creating an app, people commonsensically are not going to see that as potentially worth it. But of course, the other side of that is that AI is an exciting technology with a tremendous amount of potential for humanity.
But I don’t think that’s being communicated very well. And from a politics standpoint, that’s going to be big in November.
Pete Pachal (10:16.257)
Yeah, it’s really interesting like the communications aspect of it that you touched on there because it here’s a little theory I have. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, in that a lot of I obviously cover media and AI all the time, and there’s a lot made of how the media is now reacting to AI with the knowledge of what happened in search and social and that it all eat up their business model. So there’s a very sort of defensive view it has generally. But there’s a flip side to that.
Right. There’s and this is I feel like this is what may have sort of guided the comp, like whether it’s a strategy or whatever, like the I because here you here’s again the bear with me here. But like the jobs stuff, let’s just take that. They were they were crowing about how AI was going to kill all the jobs, like people like Dario Amade and everybody, before there was data, you know, and and so far to my knowledge, again, you correct me if I’m wrong, because you’re on top of this more than me.
I don’t think there is data yet that they’re that AI is like massive job loss. You know, there’s the anecdotal stuff, of course, but like the it’s just not there. So it’s a weird thing that they decided to come out ahead of it as sort of a comms tactic. And I feel like their lesson from that era is like, let’s talk about the negatives before they become an issue so that we’re not, you know, pilloried for it later or something. Was that
Do you think is that a theory? Like what do you think? Like is I to me it confuses me why they’re the worst pitchmen for their own tech because they they’re like kill saying it’s gonna kill everybody and before it there’s even any data to support that.
Sharon Goldman (11:48.706)
That is my theory. I I remember a few years ago, Sam Altman saying something like, you know, we’re we’re putting this technology out so people can get used to it, so they can kind of understand and in and embrace and experience what’s going to happen before before it goes further, before it gets even more advanced. And in a way, I felt like the job loss idea is sort of jumping ahead and saying, like, you need to beware, you need to reskill, you need to think about.
This, but again, before really any data has come forth. Also, they’re really thinking about within their own fields. I mean, when it comes to tech, and you know, if you’re a software developer, yes, there are job losses, there are layoffs in tech companies. This is happening to some extent, but that doesn’t broaden out necessarily to every field every position. And it also doesn’t take into consideration the potential for job creation, which, for example, Aaron Levy at Box has really been talking about beating that drum on social media lately. that new jobs will be created, that agents are still going to need humans to to manage them, to, you know, and and jobs that haven’t even been thought of yet. That’s what I wonder about.
You know, my husband is in cybersecurity, for example. Well, cybersecurity wasn’t a thing until, you know, twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago. There are there are many jobs like that. there were no social media influencers 15 years ago. So who knows what’s going to come. But I do think that you know, I guess that frontier labs like anthropic and open AI kind of with their they’re they’re also coming with their own baggage of what they talk about as far as AGI, what they believe is going to happen in the future. But again, the timing of that, is that going to happen in two years? Is that going to happen in 20 years? you know, I I just don’t think that that’s the way. Or maybe they just feel like they didn’t have enough to say yet about the positives. I don’t know.
Pete Pachal (14:03.703)
Right, right. And I feel like like you mentioned like of going back to the public sentiment, like are everyday people experiencing the positives. Yes, of course, if the AI could hear cancer tomorrow, we’d all celebrate. That’d be a huge thing. It hasn’t yet, notably. But the the the idea that like it’s making your life easier, better, etcetera, it’s to to me to my like the thing is here’s the thing. You and I I assume you’re kind of a an adopter and a trier, you know, you use this technology too. And we should get I’d love to hear about like how you’re using it. But I’m seeing good gains because I’m a power user, right? And I’m diving into these things all the time. And there’s co-working apps. And it’s like, this so cool. I think that’s very rare. I think we’re like in the story like the 1% of people and it’s a ways out. So this sort of it is anti AI stance. I feel like it’s hard to pin down on it’s not just jobs. It’s not just environment. I think it’s just this broad like
Sharon Goldman (14:32.994)
Yes.
Sharon Goldman (14:42.87)
Yeah.
Pete Pachal (15:00.917)
what’s so great about it sense that sort of people have about it. And then, yeah.
Sharon Goldman (15:05.26)
Yeah, these are not, these are not the power users. Excuse me. These are not the people necessarily even using it at work. you know, what you you talked a little bit about search and social media. I mean, these were things that really were kind of life-changing at the time, like the idea that you could, you know, follow a friend or message a friend or search for people it, you know, that you knew decades ago that you weren’t able to keep in touch with.
Pete Pachal (15:21.014)
Right.
Sharon Goldman (15:33.218)
That was a real life-changing thing, even if you feel that today there are so many downsides. That was a real game changer. Here with AI, I feel like it’s much more, it’s sort of om it’s always sort of what’s coming, what’s coming down the pike. It’s not necessarily what’s here and what you’re playing with it now. It’s also something that does take some doing as far as understanding how it could work for you.
Power users like you and I, we we all spent a lot of time trying to figure out, well, what is this really good for and what is it not you know, fun but not really useful.
Pete Pachal (16:12.342)
Yeah. What do you think AI companies should do in this front in terms of the massive wave of public s skepticism now? And you know, we can touch on the environmental stuff too, if you like, ’cause I feel like that’s a huge chapter of this. And I know you’ve covered that quite a bit. But what are what are the things they can do about this to maybe turn the tide on the sentiment, but at least between now and maybe the election? Well, not not that that necessarily favors one party or the other, but maybe it does. You tell me.
Sharon Goldman (16:34.712)
Right.
Know. I mean, these these companies now have massive comms teams, you know, that that that just are overwhelming. Hundred I remember when OpenAI just had one comms guy and now there are hundreds and hundreds. I do think, you know, I mean, and maybe they feel like they have been doing some radical transparency, but you know, transparency is key. You know, when I report on AI data centers, for example, it’s one of the things that communities
Pete Pachal (16:43.842)
Yeah.
Pete Pachal (16:50.702)
Mm.
Sharon Goldman (17:06.172)
Are so frustrated by kind of the kind of the secret nature of it that things just appear. There are NDAs and things you can’t talk about, and then suddenly, you know, something is appearing before their city council. you know, I think also just you know, maybe empathizing more and not being so Silicon Valley-centric and assuming that everyone is so excited about the the the deep tech or the…
Pete Pachal (17:21.71)
Mm.
Sharon Goldman (17:35.692)
… use cases that require you know several hundred dollars a month in tokens. I mean that this isn’t you know really speaking to the average person and and also making it clear that you know this is this is our opinion, this is the way we see the world, this is the way we see things playing out, but there are other opinions out there. There are other people saying different things.
Pete Pachal (18:03.982)
Let’s switch gears for a bit and sort of talk about the media for a bit, because that of course is what I what I zero in on a lot. well let’s just talk broadly first, actually, about the information ecosystem and stuff. Like what do you think is the biggest thing in your mind about how AI is changing that? How AI is changing what we’re doing? I I assume, you know, vis-a-vis your new venture is that you’re gonna have some kind of website and and how you’re feeling about that in terms of what AI is gonna do to it and et cetera. Maybe you even have some thoughts on whether to block or not block or what have you. But you first tell me like broadly like how are things changing and then maybe let’s make it a little more personal.
Sharon Goldman (18:43.458)
Well, ground level AI is gonna be on Substacks, so that’s one thing. And I’ve already had a sub yes, that’s still the internet. yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, as we all know, the media ecosystem has changed already almost beyond recognition. I think that you can’t you you just can’t rely on people finding you through search. You can’t rely on on
Pete Pachal (18:46.454)
Okay. Well that’s still the internet.
Sharon Goldman (19:12.576)
Google to save you. I think that the that that we’re all you so many media companies are using AI that we all have to think about our voice. We all have to think about what makes us unique and what we can offer that goes beyond the chatbot.
Pete Pachal (19:33.921)
And like the whole idea of okay, people get your information through a summary now, or at least that’s sort of a discovery window of some sort. and I don’t know like how much, you know, you can tell me about like how fortune sees that and if they’re doing things like GEO or what have you. but how is sort of covering this space sort of as you’ve thought about just even even yeah absent your new adventure, whatever, like I’m reaching an audience now through these this sort of you know disintermediation layer, the summarization layer. And
Sharon Goldman (20:05.688)
I actually remember I remember speaking to someone at a conference, a creator, and the creator was telling me, I think this might have been like three years ago, that this person wanted to be discovered by AI. He wanted Google and OpenAI and anthropic chatbots to find him and scrape him and spit him out because it was gonna help other people find him through GEO, which wasn’t even a term at the time.
Pete Pachal (20:19.758)
Mm.
Sharon Goldman (20:35.244)
And at first I was like, wow, that’s amazing that a creator would say, I want to be scraped. But today I think that is real and true. And I would have to agree with that. I don’t think there’s any point in saying, like, you can’t scrape my work, you can’t output, you know, something related to me and you know, link to my work through through you know, Claude or Chat GPT.
Pete Pachal (20:35.288)
Right.
Sharon Goldman (21:01.9)
I think that’s happening. And I think that ever every single brand out there is working towards it. I’ve noticed in my inbox several companies that this is what they do. They rep, they they work for brands and they help them get discovered. And it’s a new, it’s a new way to discover. And in my own use of AI, even outside of my professional life, I use it for shopping, I use it for research. I use it for all sorts of things. So I want to discover things through.
Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini in the same way that I would be looking for things through Google search.
Pete Pachal (21:37.507)
Totally. And you d it helps it’s very helpful when it can just bring you that information. but of course it needs to get that information from somewhere, it needs to get the context, and it ingests things like, you know, obviously journalism and other content and gives you the answer. A. G. Sulzberger just recently made a speech at a conference and he was saying that, you know, this is essentially theft. This is like if you’re a may a may building a tower, a construction company, but you get all the materials from the the village next to you or something and you just don’t pay for them. you know, again, I I don’t know how you see it, but if the copyright question is a is a is the thing that’s out there. from your reporting, I guess what I what I’m really curious about, and I don’t know if you’ve covered this issue specifically, but from what you know about the AI companies, like how seriously do they take that point of view and concerns about copyright, you know, vis a vis the
I know they have lawsuits and stuff, but like how do how do you what is your sense of like how they even think about this?
Sharon Goldman (22:40.118)
The AI companies believe that what they’ve done or or they, you know, they their their PR and strategies to communicate that their belief is that it’s fair use. You know, whether that was in their early, you know, whether that’s what they thought initially back in the day, or whether it was more like we’re we’re using this for research and it won’t matter in the future. But at this point, you know, I’ve spoken to OpenAI’s lawyers, for example, and their argument is that it is fair use. You know, this is this was you know, vast swaths of of public material. And even if there is some copyrighted material in there, you know, this is about the output, and the output isn’t the same. And you know, that’s that’s their argument. I actually thought that more of these lawsuits.
From the standpoint of the defendants, the author, the the, I’m sorry, the plaintiffs, the people bringing the lawsuits, authors, et cetera. I had a lot of predictions from lawyers saying that this would reach the Supreme Court, that, you know, that that there was a really good argument there. But I do think the AI companies have, you know, in incredible legal representation and the argument around that what they’re doing was fair use.
Has gotten a lot of traction, I think.
Pete Pachal (24:11.278)
D interesting. So do you think it will end up getting the Supreme Court? I guess ultimately, like, how do you think this question will be settled, at least in the United States? I mean, we’ve seen like o in Europe, for example, there’s well, you know, there’s there’s a different stance, shall we say, and there’s probably a little bit more movement to protect content creators. The UK body just re this is a little different issue, but the UK body recently sort of is gonna be forcing Google to separate their AI crawler from their search crawler so that copyright holders can opt out of AI search, which they kind of can’t do right now with respect to Google. kind of an in the weeds thing there, but like the broader question, how do you think this is gonna be resolved?
Sharon Goldman (24:50.744)
I feel a little
Sharon Goldman (24:55.532)
I feel a little bit cynical there. I I kind of feel like already we’re seeing the copyright issue not as front and center as it was a couple of years ago. I feel like a lot of the arguments have been thrown out by judges and there are some left, but I I I think the the the fact that copyright laws were not written for this age is the big the biggest problem. And so potentially there isn’t a way for a court to say that that OpenAI and Anthropic are completely unable to do this. And I do think that these are two massive companies now with incredible investments in their legal teams, and they have also a strong argument. So I guess cynically I kind of feel like they’re winning on the copyright side of things.
Pete Pachal (25:58.223)
Staying with like the information side of things, I know you’ve covered like the content credentials and C2PA and these standards to authenticate or potentially authenticate like what’s an AI image, what isn’t? I’ve looked at this a little bit too. it’s it’s a little depressing how l how little traction it seems to have gotten so far, at least as far as I can tell. What is your what are your thoughts on this? Does this have a chance of helping us?
kind of detect what’s r real, what’s not out there, is which is obviously a big issue as as more AI content gets distributed.
Sharon Goldman (26:38.04)
I also am a little cynical there. I think that it might help if you like in an individual scenario where you needed to find out where something specifically was real or not. But as far as like the vast swath of slop out there and your average person being able to discern that something is real or not, I think the answer is no, even if there is a symbol or whatever, something can get shared very widely before that’s even noticed or you know whether people would even believe those markings is is another issue. I think when when I’ve spoken to some experts in this field one thing I thought was interesting is the idea of doing the opposite rather than proving something is fake proving something is is real you know I f I feel like
It’s hard to say whether any of it will work though, because I feel like there’s there’s such a vast swath of slop now.
Pete Pachal (27:44.502)
Yeah. Th there definitely is. how do you define slot, by the way? Is it just you anything AI generated or is it anything AI generated that’s either worthless or misinformation or what’s what’s your general definition of slot?
Do we need one? I feel like slop has become fake news, you know what I mean? Like it’s like it kinda means what we kinda know what you mean, but kinda it’s there’s not really a good definition for it.
Sharon Goldman (28:09.634)
There isn’t. And I’m not sure all slop is slop. Like, for example, I’ve been thinking a lot about the political videos that have been going out. They’re AI generated. you know, with Trump, for example, or I’m thinking of like Spencer Pratt, the the LA mayoral candidate putting out videos. Like, are those slop? Like they have a purpose. They’re
Pete Pachal (28:21.504)
Right.
Sharon Goldman (28:35.788)
They’re being used for political gain, they’re sending a message. Is that slap in in
Pete Pachal (28:36.013)
Right.
Pete Pachal (28:41.484)
I feel like slop to your point connotes l low value. And while those are clearly AI, they’re valuable to somebody, certainly valuable to the campaigns or they wouldn’t be doing them. and so I don’t I don’t think it does. I don’t think it it meets the bar on slop, even though it’s so obviously
Sharon Goldman (28:54.06)
Right.
Sharon Goldman (29:01.1)
Yeah, I feel like slop is sort of, you know, vast quantities of low value, c clearly rather useless content, whether images or text.
Pete Pachal (29:12.686)
Mm.
Pete Pachal (29:17.442)
So I’d love to talk about, you know, obviously you’ve been reporting on this for a number of years. You have thoughts on just the how to report on this, which is to say, like, what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned? What makes AI reporting challenging? How have you been able to cover it well despite those challenges? Especially as I’m sure you’ve probably seen the number of AI reporters multiply over the past the past few years.
Sharon Goldman (29:43.288)
Well, absolutely. When I first started covering AI in twenty twenty-two, there there was a community of AI reporters, but it’s multiplied exponentially. And in a way, you know, at Fortune, for example, in a way, everyone is an AI reporter because almost everything we’re reporting on, so much of it has from a business standpoint, has an AI angle. I feel like the biggest lesson I’ve learned covering AI is.
How it has the news the news cycle is so fast, so speedy. What was news yesterday might not even be news anymore the same day. And the amount of news that just comes flowing like a tsunami on a daily basis is impossible for one person to cover. So to say you’re an AI reporter today is, you know.
Not the same as the AI reporter from a few years ago who was reporting on a few companies, frontier companies that were mostly research labs that were putting out groundbreaking research, or they were focused on enterprise use cases that were very much under the hood, that were, you know, unsexy. Today that’s completely, you know, the the amount of startups, the amount of funding, the amount of investment, the the idea that it’s propping up the entire US economy and global economy, the idea that it’s become such an issue of geopolitics between the US and China that it could actually be dangerous is you know, that’s a whole other thing. That requires dozens of reporters to cover every angle and every company.
Pete Pachal (31:25.166)
Mm.
Sharon Goldman (31:34.136)
So I feel like the lesson I’ve learned is to take a step back and be like, well, you know, not what’s the news today, you know, whether it be another embargo or another piece of gossip from OpenAI or Anthropic, but what’s most important to cover? What’s the biggest message to respond to today or to communicate? Or what am I most interested in in covering today or this week?
That you know, I have to step back, you know, for mental health purposes as well as what I see happening in the in the landscape, and say, what what’s really important here for people to know? and a lot of times that isn’t the biggest model or the latest release or the the biggest valuation. It’s really about what’s happening underneath, you know, it’s the whether it’s the
Pete Pachal (32:08.994)
Sure.
Pete Pachal (32:17.326)
Yeah.
Pete Pachal (32:30.712)
No.
Sharon Goldman (32:32.652)
the nuts and bolts of the infrastructure or the safety or what’s happening to communities or what policies are being implemented, what people are talking about behind closed doors. Those are all really important.
Pete Pachal (32:47.414)
Yeah. Do you feel like that’s kind of undercovered these days? Like do you use is there too much in the hype cycle, the products, what these things can do, or ’cause I feel like when I was covering tech, there was always like and I was covering it more from the consumer standpoint, but it was like the stuff would come out, it was pretty easy to get get pulled into like, you know, the reality distortion fields, the hype cycles and get speculative. Yeah.
Sharon Goldman (33:08.522)
Exactly. I I feel I just feel like the nature of it is it’s happening so fast. I mean, I think you know, last month maybe Anthropic had had dozens of releases, you know, you can’t possibly be covering each one you know, as as a small tech team of reporters, for example. so you you you kind of have to get outside that hype cycle. And I do think it’s undercover. That’s part of
Pete Pachal (33:21.197)
Hm.
Sharon Goldman (33:37.677)
what is driving my desire to launch ground level AI is to is to turn my focus to that and leave some of the you know the coverage of the latest drama or personnel move or even you know the latest model change from five point five to five point six to someone else.
Pete Pachal (34:01.336)
Right. Yeah. It’s always like some increment. It’s and it seems like it’s a big deal when the whole number changes, but then it kinda isn’t. It’s weird. I feel like AI, the industry just decided they have they’re not even gonna try to fix their naming slash numbering thing.
Sharon Goldman (34:15.008)
No exactly. The for forget fixing the naming conventions. We’ll just carry on.
Pete Pachal (34:19.094)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I teach this stuff and I have to constantly like figure it out, you know, like it’s it’s crazy. but I would love to learn a little bit more about how you’re specifically using AI, in your work and whether or not you might be using one of these coworking apps, whether it’s like Claude Code or or Claude Cowork or Codex, and are you know, what do you find most useful about using the technology and then what are like some red lines for you in terms
of why what you would never use it for.
Sharon Goldman (34:50.264)
Sure. I am I would say that I use AI all day, every day, but it’s really as it really is as a coworker. It’s like as my editor, as my colleague. and that sounds I feel like that sounds kind of cliche in a way, but it really is true. Like I’m constantly and I’m I’m pretty much confined my efforts to using
Chatbots. I use Claude, I use Chat GPT, occasionally Gemini, but let’s say mostly Claude and Chat GPT. And sort of all day long, I’m sort of talking to it in a conversational way. If I’m working on a story, I’m doing research, I’m asking questions, I’m sort of getting feedback on thoughts. When I’m actually writing the story, I’m actually writing my story and then
A lot of times I’ll paste in a a sentence or something and I’ll be like, I feel like this could be better. Or I’m I’m there’s a word that I’m missing here and I can’t think of it. what do you or just what do you think of this? What do you think of this from a sentence structure standpoint? or or or how do you think this larger piece, how what do you think of my organization here? Could I
Should I be reorganizing it in some way? And this is just an ongoing conversation all day. that’s really different than using it for my writing or my reporting, which I just don’t do. I just don’t find it useful for that. I feel like it’s far more useful as an editor. You know, it’s and and that’s something that I mean at fortune I’m lucky enough to have amazing editors.
Pete Pachal (36:28.462)
Mm.
Pete Pachal (36:32.302)
Mm.
Sharon Goldman (36:38.668)
But even being able to hand in a story with an improved first draft from a copy editing standpoint is a step up. And previously, Adventure Beat, I didn’t have sort of editors on every one of my pieces. So, you know, it’s really helpful from that standpoint. As far as code Claude Code, Codex, these tools, I really haven’t gotten
used to using it in a regular way. I feel like partially that’s because as a journalist, I haven’t found the right use case for myself. I’m not, I’ve never been someone who has a lot of organizational workflows. You know, I’m pretty I’m pretty flexible and just kind of like as long as it’s in my Google Drive or my inbox, I can search for it. I I really haven’t found a use case that I personally find really useful for coding tools or development tools.
I also have found them to be a little bit hard for someone like me who isn’t naturally inclined to dig into them. I’m not someone who loves tools generally from you know pre-dating AI. So I feel like as they become more user-friendly for the average person, which I still consider myself to be as far as a tech tools user, I feel like maybe there will be some workflows that I find them useful for.
Pete Pachal (37:33.159)
sure.
Sharon Goldman (38:02.476)
But some of the things I use AI for are just so, you know, run of the mill. I mean, nothing has changed my life more than trans transcriptions, AI transcriptions. To be able to do that in real time on my interview saves me so much time. And that’s, you know, a pretty straightforward use case. But and being able to search those transcripts and being able to ask Claude or ChatGPT to find something in one of my transcripts.
Pete Pachal (38:12.942)
Sure. Yeah.
Pete Pachal (38:30.509)
Yeah.
Sharon Goldman (38:30.7)
These are the game changers for me as a reporter.
Pete Pachal (38:34.284)
Nice. I’d be interested in like circling back with you in like six months to a year and see where you’re at with coworking stuff, especially with w running your own operation, ’cause I’ve found them invaluable. Yeah. Anytime.
Sharon Goldman (38:42.604)
Yeah, I actually think that that yeah. Well, and I’d love to pick your brain brain on that. But yeah, I do think like running my own business, that’ll be a new opportunity for me to test certain things and see how they work for me and could I find them useful. so yeah. Well then I’ll have to take one of your courses then.
Pete Pachal (38:56.856)
Well, I think you’ll find them useful. Nice. wow. Hey, awesome. You heard it here, guys. sweet. So like but let’s look forward as we’re looking forward. I’m I’m curious about what you see as maybe the big stories in AI over the next year. We touched on the election a little bit, but that’s certainly gonna be something I feel like this is probably gonna be the AI election, at least maybe the maybe the first one that where it’s really a major issue. But what else what else are you seeing?
Sharon Goldman (39:11.552)
Mm.
Pete Pachal (39:25.774)
coming down the pike. what what do you think are gonna be the big stories? And also like what do you think will continue to be like the undercovered stories that that you think are the most important?
Sharon Goldman (39:36.889)
I think the AI data center boom story is going to continue to rise. Most notably the backlash. I think it’s growing. I think it hasn’t reached its peak. I still think it’s undercovered in some ways, like from some angles. For example, you know, of course I’ve been covering at Fortune, I’ve done a series of stories on different communities that have been affected by.
AI data center builds or proposals in their neighborhoods, in their backyards. But the backlash has become very activist. It’s become across you know, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in your backyard or not. It’s just people are generally opposed. And there’s been a tremendous rise in conspiracy theories, I’ve noticed. massive Facebook groups that are focused on the fact that they feel like
Data centers are surveillance centers, that they’re really about population control, that they, you know, emit radiation that can cause cancer. That, you know, I’ve e I’ve read some really strange things about people who think that they’re built on they’re being these mega AI data centers are being built on farms because they want to take away people’s ability to grow food. I mean, really out there kind of things. That kind of leads into another area that I’m concerned about, which is the potential for, you know, that backlash to turn violent. I do think that that’s a real issue. So that’s, you know, more things that I think could be reported. the build itself, I do find really interesting, like the different ways that data center companies are working to make those data centers more efficient, smaller, less, you know, impacting the environments.
There will continue to be more discoveries and improvements in that area. And I would like to report on that. I think the AI security issue is going to be huge. I’ll be going to the annual Black Hat Security Conference in August again, and DEF CON, which is the biggest annual hacker conference. And I think it’s going to be incredibly, you know, filled with news, which I’d like to cover because I think that’s
Sharon Goldman (42:02.976)
Cybersecurity is going to be a huge issue. and of course, you know, the the big IPOs are gonna be huge, you know, anthropic and open AI and SpaceX, you know, so from a business standpoint, you know, that’s just gonna be filling the headlines for for months to come. yeah.
Pete Pachal (42:05.976)
Totally. Yeah. With this whole mythos model, yeah.
Pete Pachal (42:12.683)
Mm.
Pete Pachal (42:26.85)
Nice. Well, going going a level up from the headlines, like thinking about the trends that all these things are feeding and and creating, looking forward, like what do you see? This is how I sort of wanna wanna at end most of my podcasts, like give me one thing to be concerned about in a broad sort of trend kind of way, and one thing to be hopeful about that from your perspective in in the AI world. Do it in whatever order you like.
Sharon Goldman (42:52.14)
I think that I think the biggest thing to be concerned about is how society is how how c AI is being communicated to society and how people are understanding it. I think the tremendous backlash to AI generally, like we’ve been talking about, is I mean, you can call it a communications issue, you can call it a technology issue, but whatever it is something is not getting through. This is not like previous technology evolutions where people saw some upsides. People saw upsides from the automobile, people saw upsides from the industrial revolution, from computers, from the internet, from social media. I feel like AI is having a harder time for all the reasons that we said. It’s it’s hard to communicate, it’s hard to explain. There’s
It’s so fast moving. There’s so much coming. And yet, is it any of it really life-changing? Plus, there are all these dangers that keep being talked about, as well as job loss. So I’m really concerned about how the general public is dealing with a societal shift that is so all-encompassing and fast and really hard to understand too. You know, these are people who are not tech forward, you know, for someone who’s not a techie.
on the other hand, I feel like that same thing, the idea of AI as this general technology is also what makes it hopeful because I do think that there’s another way to see it. It it it remains to be seen if job loss is really going to occur. I personally feel that there’s also a lot of jobs to be created. I think there’s a lot of areas that will, you know, maybe grow as a contrast to AI, you know.
in in real life experiences, for example. I do think there’s tremendous opportunity for AI to help with many issues in our global world, whether it’s healthcare or the environment. And there are also going to be so many technological improvements in terms of efficiency and you know, not being as impactful to the environment that I I do think there’s a tremendous
Sharon Goldman (45:16.212)
scope that we can look at for hope.
Pete Pachal (45:19.662)
Nice. Cool. We’ll leave it there. Sharon, thanks so much for dropping by. can’t wait to see what you do with ground level AI. And I can’t wait to have you back once once you’ve done some more incredible stories. Appreciate it.
Sharon Goldman (45:33.72)
Thank you so much, Pete. Thanks so much for having me.