Ethan Ward

Ethan Ward is a product strategist and journalist whose reporting has run in USA Today, NPR, Slate, and Marketplace. His AI-assisted newsletter, The Thread, won the 2026 Online Journalism Award for Excellence in AI Innovation. He reports and edits Interested Party.

Stories

Oct 18, 2026

Carol Myers Paid at a Sainsbury’s Self-Checkout. Then the Screen Flashed Red.

Staff acted on the screen. Nobody could tell her who, or what, had flagged her.

Oct 18, 2026

Hyperscale Data Stopped the Hum in Dowagiac. Its Statement Didn’t Mention the Neighbors.

Mining stopped under an agreement with the company’s new AI customer, the release says. The 340-megawatt expansion is still planned.

Oct 18, 2026

Experts Taught ChatGPT Their Jobs at $50 an Hour. One Said They Were Replacing Themselves.

Handshake, which ran the project, has refused to pay some contractors on OpenAI work. “There is no appeal process,” one email said.

Oct 18, 2026

Sam Altman Wants AI Widely Shared. Black Founders Got 0.32% of the Money.

None of the U.S. AI startups that raised $100 million or more in 2024 had a Black founder.

Oct 18, 2026

A Claude Watermark Can’t Prove a Student Cheated

Anthropic now hides a mark in text Claude writes. Its own help page says a detected mark is “not fully conclusive.”

Oct 18, 2026

Sainsbury’s Says Its Facial Recognition Isn’t the Problem. Two Shoppers Were Told to Leave.

Both times, Sainsbury’s blamed its staff. Facewatch, which runs the system, blamed the store.

Oct 18, 2026

OpenAI Says a Committee Governs Its Safety. Four of Its Safety Teams Are Gone.

In July, OpenAI disclosed that it had tested a model without the safeguards it gives the public. The test led to a security incident at Hugging Face.

Oct 18, 2026

Whose Mafia?

The men in WIRED’s “gay tech mafia” are rich and white. LGBTQ+ founders got 0.5% of startup funding from 2000 to 2022. Nobody counts those who are also Black.

Oct 18, 2026

xAI Sued Colorado Over “Racial Justice.” The Phrase Isn’t in the Law.

Colorado has since rewritten the law and dropped its duty to prevent AI discrimination. Comments on the new rules are due Oct. 26.

Oct 18, 2026

AI Is the New “Who Did You Vote For?”

Republicans and Democrats are now equally worried about AI, Pew found. The fight over it is moving to dinner tables, dating apps, and the streets next to data centers.