Facial recognition, young cancer patients, and OpenAI: Future Perfect Top 10

It’s that time of year. As Future Perfect has done in the past, we’re rounding up the most read articles of the year. This little trip down memory lane can give us a sense of the breadth and depth of Future Perfect’s coverage and the stories and subjects that you, the viewer, are most excited about.

This year’s Top 10 list includes most of our classic themes, like animal welfare and factory farming, and why Thanksgiving is exactly the perfect day to lose the turkey and go vegan. This is exemplified by the article by Marina Bolotnikova. We love trying to predict the future, as evidenced by the ever-popular New Year predictions. and the safety of AI as demonstrated by Sigal Samuel and Kelsey Piper’s breaking news on OpenAI.

But there were some surprises on the list. Take, for example, the prescient warning from outside writers Gil Berndaler and Matthew C. Mai that the most important component of the U.S. military is running out of soldiers. Or Dylan Matthews’ interesting deep dive into a little-known State Department intelligence agency that has a better track record than the CIA when it comes to predicting world events.

At this time of year, I would like to thank both our wonderful staff, our many external contributors, and our audience for their interest, especially those of you who have subscribed to this newsletter (and the other newsletter we launched this year: Marina). I am always grateful. Kenny Torrella’s Processing Meat and Sigal’s ethical advice column Your Mileage May Vary, distributed twice a month through this feed. Here’s to a bigger and better 2025.

Let me reveal a dirty little secret in the journalism industry: Timing matters. Now that the coronavirus is more or less in the rearview mirror, we’re in the midst of a record summer air travel season as Americans take to the skies again. announced the abolition of Presumably millions of these planes were allowing airlines to scan their faces without a second thought, but as Segal writes, this is something you can opt out of, and for privacy reasons. Given these concerns, it’s probably something you should opt out of. Keep that in mind this holiday season.

When this film came out in January, I learned two things. First, unless you’re an active bodybuilder, very few people actually need to consume too much protein. In fact, as Kenny writes, thanks to a meat-based diet, the average American already consumes significantly more protein than dietary guidelines require, even without trying. . And two, our readers have very strong opinions about nutrition. I don’t think any other work has received as much attention this year.

This is another lesson in journalism. If you receive in-depth coverage of a little-known health issue (in this case, the rise of certain cancers among young people), when one of the most famous people in the world takes up the issue. , make sure to push it out. The world becomes part of that story. Dylan Scott, a major contributor to this year’s Future Perfect as editor and writer, brings deep health reporting expertise to this article on the rise in colorectal cancer in patients under 50. News that the Princess of Wales was cancer-free helped reach a wider audience.

You all love reading about what we think is going to happen in the year ahead. (Another prediction piece I did for Vox’s 10th anniversary about 10 things I think will happen in the next 10 years was also popular.) Why is that? We’d like to think it’s because we have deep faith in our ability to analyze the world, but maybe it’s just because we enjoy seeing all the wrong predictions we make. Well, good news! Come back on December 30th and you’ll see how well (or badly) we did.

Mr Benji, who is usually seen trekking to colorful locations around the world documenting the plight of biodiversity for Vox’s climate division, is currently working to dismantle a lawsuit against oat milk. I stopped by Future Perfect in February. As Benji explained, foods should not be categorized in a simple dichotomy of good/bad. And we should never ignore the impact that food has on the environment and the animals with which we share it. Dairy-free oat milk is better on both counts.

One of my goals for 2024 was to make the future of war a bigger part of Future Perfect’s coverage. Whether we like it or not, and neither do I, conflicts are escalating and the technologies used in warfare are changing rapidly. That’s why I was so pleased to see this external article by Catholic University Senior Fellow Gil Berndler and Defense Priorities Contributing Fellow Matthew C. Mai reach such a wide audience. This work connects two major trends: demographic change and escalation of global conflict, and shows how they are intersecting in dangerous ways for the United States.

Journalism Lesson #3: Never let a long weekend go by without capitalizing on your audience’s interest. Thanksgiving factory farming stories have become something of a tradition for us, but Marina’s work was truly a masterpiece. She started with the uncontroversial premise that Americans don’t actually like turkey all that much, and developed that into a call to action for people who care about animal welfare to bring back Thanksgiving. Side give, anyone?

At Future Perfect, we cover celebrity breakup news a little differently. There’s certainly juicy gossip behind billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett’s decision not to donate his fortune to the Gates Foundation after his death, as he had long planned. But Kelsey said Buffet’s $137 billion fortune went to his three adult children rather than to one of the most effective global health charities ever developed. I was far more concerned about what would be lost if In her words: “‘Three weirdos need to agree on how to spend $135 billion’ sounds more like a sitcom than a process of accomplishing really good things with that much money.” Sounds like a premise.”

Dylan Matthews is now best known for starting the endless debate over whether it is ethical to fund the rebuilding of Notre Dame instead of saving the lives of children. (Not really.) But we know there’s nothing Dylan loves more than delving into the unknown parts of the federal government and interviewing Washington, D.C., elder statesmen about how things used to be. That side of Dylan came up with one of my favorite stories of 2024. This is a profile of the State Department’s Bureau of Information and Research. The bureau put much larger and better-funded intelligence agencies to shame with its oracle-like predictive abilities.

I’m cheating a bit by putting two episodes in one slot, but I’m the editor. In fact, these two stories are deeply related and are part of a series of research reports on ChatGPT maker OpenAI that we published in May. In the first article, Sigal Samuel tells a former OpenAI employee the inside story of how the AI ​​startup’s supercoordination team, the team tasked with keeping future superintelligence safe, fell from grace. I got it. Second, Kelsey Piper received a company document in which CEO Sam Altman revealed the truth about how OpenAI used threats to block stock sales to retain former employees. It showed what it didn’t say. These articles made news and led to real change in perhaps the most important AI companies. There is no better example of the impact that Future Perfect will have on the world in 2024.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Please register here!