My new train is leaving the station! 🚂 After four years covering AI through one of the most consequential — and chaotic — periods in tech history, most recently at Fortune, I'm launching an independent media platform called Ground Level AI. 🥳
Ground Level AI is focused on one big question: What happens when AI meets the real world? The massive infrastructure buildout, the enterprise reality, the security stakes, the policy decisions happening right now, the societal consequences, the geopolitical fault lines: these are the stories that will define how this technology actually lands.
Ground Level AI launches as a newsletter and podcast on Substack, featuring original, often on-the-ground reporting, exclusive interviews, and analysis of the fast-paced AI news cycle 2-3 times per week. I'll be following the story wherever it leads—from research labs and industry conferences to corporate boardrooms, data center communities, and the DC policy debates shaping AI's future.
My goal is to connect the dots, and I've also been around long enough to be wary of hype. Sometimes, though, I just like to laugh at the craziness of it all! You'll find that here, too.
If you are a practitioner building AI, an executive deploying it, or work in AI policy, security or infrastructure, you're my people. But if you're looking for signals or you’re just curious about where AI is going, you'll feel right at home as well. This is a leap, and I'd be so grateful to have you along for the ride at
groundlevel-ai.com
I feel like I've been building toward Ground Level AI my whole career. I've spent more than 25 years in journalism in almost every role imaginable — including staff writer, editor, reporter, blogger and even fact-checker. Before covering AI at Fortune and VentureBeat, I spent more than a decade building a successful independent freelance business. Throughout it all, I've always been drawn to creating things from scratch: new projects, new communities, and new conversations.
It was a dream come true when AI editor
@jeremyakahn brought me onto the small but mighty tech team at
@FortuneMagazine, and I'm so grateful to have reported on one of the biggest stories of our time for such an iconic publication. I'm planning to continue contributing to Fortune, but I'm also ready for this new chapter.
I'm hoping you'll subscribe, share, comment, and help me get Ground Level AI, well, literally off the ground:
groundlevel-ai.com.
I'm also planning to bring some of these conversations offline through intimate events and discussions with the people building and grappling with AI firsthand. Interested in collaborating, sponsoring, or having me speak? Reach out at sharon@groundlevel-ai.com. I'm all ears.
For news tips (not PR pitches), you can also reach me securely on Signal at sharongoldman.43 (we can start off the record and take it from there).
