At the end of each year, journalists look back to see where our predictions were right or wrong, what the biggest events of the year were, and what the year really was, taken as a whole. I like to see what it means.
When I started this for 2024, I was amazed at how much had happened.
Joe Biden has withdrawn from the presidential election! Donald Trump was almost assassinated! …and convicted of 34 felonies! …And I was selected again! Elon Musk became his right-hand man. Israel’s war in Gaza exploded into further fighting with Hezbollah and Iran, which (unless I speak too quickly) was resolved surprisingly quickly. Syrian rebels came out of nowhere to overthrow a regime that had ruled for more than 50 years.
An alarming new outbreak of avian influenza has spread from animals to humans. (If you haven’t heard of it, it’s because apparently people don’t want to think about the pandemic again.) Self-driving cars have gone from fantasy to widespread reality (at least in the Bay Area, where I live).
AI has grown exponentially again. You can now interact for free with models that produce much better images, get comprehensive research reports on any topic, and perform well across a wide range of tasks (although there are some obvious There are fundamental flaws).
One of the biggest challenges in writing a retrospective like this is figuring out which of the many events will actually last five, 10, or even 50 years from now. The news cycle has become very fast these days. Nothing lingers in the headlines or discourse. We break down events, interpret them, meme them, and move on from there.
The impact on the lives of millions of people will absolutely be long-lasting, but then the discussion moves on to the next topic – this week, the United Healthcare shooting. Next week, who knows? In this rapidly changing environment, it’s very difficult to keep in mind which events are momentous, world-changing, and which are quickly forgotten.
keep some perspective on the news
There’s nothing more humbling than reading past annual reviews. They rarely mention what we would now recognize as the most important events of that year: the founding of Google in 1998 or Amazon in 1994. The invention of the modern Internet in 1983. In 1996, a highly effective HIV antiviral therapy was developed.
In retrospect, the most important event of 2019 was the reporting of a strange new disease in Chinese media in late December. Still, Vox’s 2019 recap highlighted the first Trump impeachment (remember that?) and the longest government shutdown in history (I totally forgot).
Of course, there is no way to confidently guess in advance which new virus will claim millions of lives and which, like most viruses, will die out quietly and without incident. There is no. And if there’s a way to tell Amazon and Google apart in advance, I think they’re using it to get rich, not to write news articles. However, there are some general trends to learn here.
Politics matters and has a huge impact on hundreds of millions of lives. But what we focus on about politics is often not the most important thing.
The administration’s regulatory changes to phase out nuclear power, accelerate vaccine development and fund AIDS prevention in Africa are often far more important than the year’s most high-profile political battles. International events are important, but they are very difficult to predict.
No one I spoke to believed that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria was imminent. Even experts predicted there was little chance of the frozen civil war starting this year, let alone reaching this shocking conclusion. (The rapid collapse of the Afghan state after the US withdrawal also surprised many prophets. Lesson: Wars can spend long periods of time in what appears to be a stalemate, and then change very quickly).
Another point is that technology is important.
In the long run, the most world-changing events of the 20th century were often inventions. Antibiotics and vaccines have reduced child mortality rates from half all children to virtually zero. Washing machines and vacuum cleaners changed domestic labor, and air conditioning changed settlement patterns in the United States. The transformation of civic culture and society brought about by radio, television, computers, and smartphones.
Every technologist likes to claim that they are the next step in that journey, but most of them are wrong. But someone can be right, and someone who ignores massive technological changes in our lifetimes is even more wrong.
So as we look back on 2024, there is one question in particular that is helpful to keep in mind. What would have shocked me the most in my life this year if I had known it in 2014? And the answer, at least for me, is clearly artificial intelligence.
If you want very specific artwork, just type in a few words and it will be generated. When trying to understand technical text, I ask the language model for its interpretation.
Self-driving cars are cool, but we knew in 2014 that people were going to make it happen. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine, increasing tensions between Israel and Gaza. The Syrian civil war had already begun. The shape of most of what turned out to be 2024 wouldn’t have surprised me all that much. However, the capabilities of modern AI systems go far beyond what could have been imagined a decade ago.
But maybe that’s just me. I use AI more than many of my readers. So let me ask you a question. What shocked you the most in your life today in 2014? That might be the real answer to the most important thing that happened this year.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Register here!
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