For the last few years, we’ve been asking Future Perfect newsletter readers what their biggest questions are. And while we usually answer privately, we figured we’d try something new: a reader mailbag!

This week, we’ve answered questions from three readers on classic FP issues: artificial intelligence, animal welfare coverage, and, of course, altruistic kidney donations. We’d like to do more of these, so if your question wasn’t featured — or privately answered — please stay in touch for a chance to be included in the future.

This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter.

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We’re also kicking off the process for our annual Future Perfect list of changemakers. We’re looking for experts, humanitarians, activists, movers, and shakers in global health, broadly speaking.

If there is someone you want to nominate, a topic you want explained, or a question you want us to answer in the future, fill out this form or email us at futureperfect@vox.com. — Izzie Ramirez, deputy editor

By which methods can one ascertain that whatever is produced by AI is exact and truthful?

For any question you’re considering asking an AI model, the first thing you need to do is think about its epistemic nature: Is the answer knowable in an objective way? Or is it subjective?

The best use case is a situation where it’s hard for you to come up with the answer, but once you get an answer from the AI, you can easily check to see if it’s correct. I find chatbots particularly helpful for semantic search — that is, cases where I say, “There’s some psychology theory or idea in philosophy that basically says XYZ, but I can’t remember what it’s called or who said it, help!” The chatbot will give its best guess, and then I can just fact-check that.

Same with other empirical facts that are verifiable through observation or data — anything from “What’s the boiling temperature for water?” to “Is it true that humans share 98.8 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees?” While you can easily verify the first by yourself through observation, you’ll need to rely on experts’ data for the second. In that case, you need to feel confident that what’s produced by your fellow humans is exact and truthful. We’ve developed tools that increase our confidence, like the scientific method, so if you’re consulting scientific experts, you can at least have some degree of confidence that they’re reporting observable and........

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