Saturday, August 30, 2025

Future Excellent mailbag: Is AI mendacity? And different reader questions, answered.

For the previous few years, we’ve been asking Future Excellent publication readers what their largest questions are. And whereas we often reply privately, we figured we’d attempt one thing new: a reader mailbag!

This week, we’ve answered questions from three readers on traditional FP points: synthetic intelligence, animal welfare protection, and, in fact, altruistic kidney donations. We’d love to do extra of those, so in case your query wasn’t featured — or privately answered — please keep in contact for an opportunity to be included sooner or later.

Join right here to discover the massive, sophisticated issues the world faces and essentially the most environment friendly methods to unravel them. Despatched twice per week.

We’re additionally kicking off the method for our annual Future Excellent checklist of changemakers. We’re on the lookout for specialists, humanitarians, activists, movers, and shakers in world well being, broadly talking.

If there’s somebody you need to nominate, a subject you need defined, or a query you need us to reply sooner or later, fill out this manner or e-mail us at futureperfect@vox.com. — Izzie Ramirez, deputy editor

By which strategies can one confirm that no matter is produced by AI is actual and truthful?

For any query you’re contemplating asking an AI mannequin, the very first thing it’s worthwhile to do is consider its epistemic nature: Is the reply knowable in an goal method? Or is it subjective?

The most effective use case is a state of affairs the place it’s exhausting so that you can provide you with the reply, however when you get a solution from the AI, you possibly can simply verify to see if it’s right. I discover chatbots significantly useful for semantic search — that’s, circumstances the place I say, “There’s some psychology principle or thought in philosophy that mainly says XYZ, however I can’t bear in mind what it’s referred to as or who stated it, assist!” The chatbot will give its finest guess, after which I can simply fact-check that.

A person works at a computer with an illustrative image generated by artificial intelligence on the screen, showing code from various programming languages and a neural network diagram.

ILLUSTRATION – 17 Could 2024, North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne: An individual works at a pc with an illustrative picture generated by synthetic intelligence on the display screen, displaying code from varied programming languages and a neural community diagram. On the assembly of telecommunications ministers on Could 21, the EU international locations are anticipated to lastly undertake the AI legislation within the EU. The European Parliament had already given the inexperienced mild for the mission beforehand. Photograph: Oliver Berg/dpa (Photograph by Oliver Berg/image alliance through Getty Photos)
Oliver Berg/image alliance through Getty Photos

Identical with different empirical info which are verifiable via statement or information — something from “What’s the boiling temperature for water?” to “Is it true that people share 98.8 p.c of their DNA with chimpanzees?” When you can simply confirm the primary by your self via statement, you’ll must depend on specialists’ information for the second. In that case, it’s worthwhile to really feel assured that what’s produced by your fellow people is actual and truthful. We’ve developed instruments that improve our confidence, just like the scientific technique, so when you’re consulting scientific specialists, you possibly can at the least have a point of confidence that they’re reporting observable and repeatable info.

Then there are domains which are inherently subjective. When you’ve bought the kind of query for which there is no such thing as a One True Reply, you’ll need to be extra hesitant about utilizing AI. I feel moral dilemmas fall into this class; regardless of how a lot OpenAI tries to create a “common verifier,” AI will at all times be restricted in its skill to advise you on easy methods to deal with an moral dilemma, as a result of there’s no One True Ethics. So, you would possibly see what ideas an AI mannequin provokes in you, however don’t belief it as supplying you with the ultimate reply, particularly if what it’s saying appears off to you. In different phrases, you should use it as a thought companion, however don’t deal with it like an oracle.

— Sigal Samuel, senior reporter

Okay, after greater than 5 years as a vegan and 73 years on the planet, I need to know why the nice majority of journalists persistently abandon every part they discovered about objectivity in the case of a mess of points with the monster business generally known as “animal agriculture?” And I need to know easy methods to fight that bias successfully.

It’s a large blind spot for many of them. My finest guess is the conditioning is so sturdy. It begins as a toddler, is bolstered by the parental relationship, expands to prolonged household, buddies, bolstered once more by all sorts of promoting media, leisure, and so forth. Then they go to journalism college and are taught by instructors who even have this blind spot.

So later a reporter will go to a “hen farm” and empathize with them once they inform their story about shedding hundreds of birds to avian flu — their sense of loss just isn’t in regards to the birds; it’s in regards to the cash. The reporter presents the story with out questioning the fundamentals. Issues like “the place are all of the male birds?” [and] “how is it doable for anybody to suppose that 35,000 birds could possibly be pressured to stay collectively in a constructing with out affordable entry to the outside?” and “why does it odor so unhealthy?” and “why do you’ve permission to restrict animals with out their permission?”

I feel the reason being fairly easy: Journalists are folks with their very own biases, identical to everybody else. That’s evident in how little protection manufacturing facility farming receives within the first place — it entails the abuse of billions of animals and lots of of hundreds of staff, and is a number one reason for a lot of our environmental issues, but solely a handful of US journalists write about it full-time (together with yours actually). Most information retailers and editors don’t take manufacturing facility farming critically, which is why I’m proud to work at Vox, the place we do.

That’s essentially the most basic downside. However secondarily, whereas there’s loads of implausible protection of manufacturing facility farming, most of the time, I discover I’m dissatisfied with loads of it, too. I see a number of recurring points:

  • Animal welfare is missed or completely ignored. For instance, it’s not unusual for information tales about barn fires that kill hundreds of animals to conclude that “nobody was damage,” or for a narrative about lots of of hundreds of egg-laying hens killed to gradual the unfold of fowl flu to gloss over the brutal nature of that killing.
  • Deference to meat producers and firms, or scientists employed by or affiliated with business, together with deceptive feedback that go unchallenged.
  • “Agriculture” is commonly cited as a significant supply of environmental air pollution, when animal agriculture is disproportionately accountable.
  • Uncritical tales about proposed options to animal agriculture’s impression on the local weather, like methane-reducing feed components or manure biodigesters. Or uncritical protection of firms that declare to deal with their animals higher than the competitors (see our current story on Fairlife milk).

I’ve written one story about how the media might cowl these points higher, and I hope to maintain protecting that sooner or later.

Kenny Torrella, senior reporter

Tales like Dylan Matthews’s years in the past led me to analyze donating a kidney to a stranger. I requested my physician about it, and surprisingly, as an alternative of encouraging me to avoid wasting a life, he tried to speak me out of it.

He informed me that it’s unlawful to donate a kidney to a stranger! I stay in Hong Kong, and perhaps the explanation for prohibiting even the donation of a kidney to a stranger is the concern that folks would secretly settle for cost from the kidney recipient. However I don’t know why. Anyway, I thought of donating whereas on a trip within the US, however it will require an excessive amount of time, so I gave up.

Sadly, my second kidney will most likely die with me in previous age, and somebody with kidney failure will needlessly die. Anyway, perhaps one other story thought can be about paying kidney suppliers in international locations apart from the US?

Most individuals aren’t as beneficiant as you!

Within the US, solely a sliver of residing donations go to strangers. In the meantime, over 100,000 folks sit on kidney waitlists. And, as you point out, the necessity for kidneys is a world downside, too.

Many locations solely enable donations to family members or recognized recipients (or require powerful ethics evaluations for unrelated donors), whereas a minority — just like the US, UK, Canada, and Australia — supply a proper pathway for nameless “good Samaritan” donors. In Hong Kong, the place you’re primarily based, you possibly can donate to a member of the family simply, however unrelated donations want official approval, and there’s no commonplace program for that. (That’s most likely why you had been discouraged.)

This patchwork exists for a purpose.

Within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, there was a critical trafficking and transplant tourism downside. In 2007, the WHO estimated that about 5–10 p.c of kidney transplants concerned trafficking, and international locations just like the Philippines and Pakistan grew to become hubs for overseas sufferers shopping for organs from determined locals.
Transplant specialists met in Istanbul in 2008 and wrote what grew to become the worldwide rulebook. The Istanbul Declaration pushed international locations to crack down on coercive gross sales of organs. Each nation had its personal legal guidelines, however started incorporating the declaration’s suggestions. Because of this, transplant tourism dropped sharply in Israel and the Philippines as soon as new guidelines kicked in, and tighter oversight grew to become the norm throughout Europe.

A sign on the back of a vehicle pleading for someone to donate a kidney to a sick man in Ontario, Canada.

An indication on the again of a automobile pleading for somebody to donate a kidney to a sick man in Ontario, Canada.
Inventive Contact Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto through Getty Photos

However, in its efforts to close down trafficking, the declaration argued that compensating donors in any respect “leads inexorably to inequity and injustice.” There was little empirical information to again that declare, however as a result of it got here from a significant worldwide assertion it hardened into gospel: organ donation should be “financially impartial.”

However neutrality isn’t truly impartial in follow. Dwelling donors lose wages, take break day work, take medical threat, and typically even face increased insurance coverage premiums after donating. We don’t name that exploitation — however it is a penalty for doing the best factor.

And it’s inconsistent with how we deal with different socially invaluable, dangerous, or disagreeable work. We pay folks to do jury responsibility. We pay scientific trial members. In lots of locations, we even pay plasma donors.

There may be one placing exception: Iran.

It’s the one nation with a regulated system that pays kidney donors. Iran established this technique in 1988, and right now performs about 2,500-2,700 kidney transplants yearly, and it claims to have basically eradicated its ready checklist. It’s a proof-of-concept that incentives may be structured.

The US debate is inching in that route. Congress’s Finish Kidney Deaths Act would supply a federal tax credit score to individuals who donate a kidney to a stranger. Donors would obtain a $10,000 tax credit score yearly for 5 years, so not fairly direct cost, however actually a assist. The act, which has not been voted on but, acknowledges that donation entails actual prices: break day work, medical dangers, restoration time.
The trail ahead globally isn’t throwing out Istanbul’s anti-trafficking work, however to construct on it with good incentives and guardrails so folks can donate altruistically in the event that they need to. Which means truly testing new approaches, however doing it rigorously. Give donors unbiased advocates, make certain there’s time to suppose it over, and assure lifelong follow-up care.

Within the meantime, you may not be capable to simply donate your kidney to a stranger proper now in Hong Kong, however the needle is shifting in the best route.

— Pratik Pawar, Future Excellent fellow

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