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Google To Predict Accuracy of Political Statements

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the google-knows dept.

pestario writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about a service which can give the probability of the accuracy of statements made by politicians, among other things. From the Reuters article, Schmidt says: "We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability." Can Google's 'truth predictor' bring an end to sound bites and one-liners? I'm not holding my breath...""

25 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. I know what the politicians will do. by AltGrendel · · Score: 5, Funny

    They'll use this to tweak the statement until it passes the test.

    --
    The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination

    - Douglas Adams

    1. Re:I know what the politicians will do. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed they will. Issuing in a deluge of "Truth Engine Optimization" consultants. And anyone who doesn't have the money to hire them will be seen as less and less trustwothy. I think we all see this as a fool's errand.

      I find it interesting the reflection this shows of where we are with net content in the days of Search Engine Optimization. In utopian theory, the web is perfectly democratised content where anyone can post anything. The search engines are supposed to match users to sites based solely on the content of the sites, and rank them solely on relevance. However, in this age of Search Engine Optimization, it's possible for someon with enough knowledge and/or consultants to claw their way to the top of the pile, which (necessarilly) is at the expense of less optimized sites that are more relevant. Which, of course, forces the more relevant sites to optimize themselves in return to "restore the balance."

      We're now somewhat a level abstracted from the utopian purity of "relevance" in Google (and other search engine) results, just as this new tool would abstract us away from the purity of actual "truth"

  2. Layman's method by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How do you tell a politician is lying?

    Easy, his lips are moving.

  3. Needs to be open source by HugePedlar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Otherwise the result could be perpetually set to "0% Truth" and we'd never know if it worked or not.

    --
    Argh.
  4. Harry Seldon would be proud by t0xic@ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I guess Psychohistory is here! I just wish Isaac Asimov would have lived a bit longer.

  5. Lying is not the major problem by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    it's not good, but it's not the worst thing politicians do.

    Framing is the worst thing they do. By that I mean framing an issue in a narrow way cleverly engineered to suit a hidden agenda.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Lying is not the major problem by nate+nice · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Otherwise known as lying.

      You're either being truthful or you're not. You either have good intentions or you don't. Yes, the world *is* this black and white. The world *is* this simple. And you're either lying or you're not. Sometimes it's hard to determine, but it's one way or the other. Any amount of lying makes your whole statement untrue and therefore you're a liar.

      If you're telling me something, even if it's "true", but the goal is decieve or take advantage of, then you're lying.

      --
      "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ..."
    2. Re:Lying is not the major problem by Grym · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not necessarily...

      Sure, GoogleTruth(TM) could, yes, figure out if Ted Stevens classic "The Internet is a series of tubes" is true or not, but what if I said something like "Abortion kills fetuses and embryos." While this statement is true, it sets the tone of the discussion in a way that ignores the other issues involved, such as the nature of the conception (e.g. rape, incest), the health/developmental state of the fetus, the right of the mother to choose what's best for herself and her body, etc. That is called framing a debate--and it's extremely effective.

      Framing a debate can often boil down to the terms used themselves. A good example of this is the Patriot Act. What does that mean? Does voting against the Patriot Act make one... unpatriotic? And even if you agree with the provisions of the Patriot Act, what does increased homeland security/surveillence have to do with being a patriot?

      This is what the GP was referring to as framing, and it IS NOT lying. It is, however, academically dishonest in that it is a form of a logical fallacy. I'll be very surprised if google can manage to catch this too, seeing as how most people are terrible at it.

      -Grym

  6. Solve the problem from the other end by BandwidthHog · · Score: 4, Funny

    What if we invent a politician whose speech patterns change when he’s bullshitting you? Perhaps we could chemically engineer his brain to stumble over words and become maddeningly misunderarticulate whenever he strays from reality.

    Nah, it’d never work, he’d end up sounding too addled to get himself elected.

    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
    1. Re:Solve the problem from the other end by Nicaboker · · Score: 4, Funny

      ..Have you heard any of Bush's speeches?

      --
      So many choices, so little tolerance.
    2. Re:Solve the problem from the other end by jb.hl.com · · Score: 3, Funny

      That joke went flying over your head faster than a chair in Steve Ballmer's office.

      --
      By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
  7. Who's watching Google? by hal2814 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is Google going to be backing up the true and false statements with sources? Furthermore, what sources are they going to use? How will they evaluate statements that are viewed as true by some sources but false by others? I don't know about you guys but I don't exactly trust Google to give me some sort of percentage true or false without justifying their position. I also don't entirely trust Google not to abuse such a position. Often the truth is what you make of it and I'm not so sure I'll buy into Google-branded truth. I think that researching what the politicians say yourself is your best line of defense in determining how much they lie.

  8. News Lie Detector by N8F8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought by now we'd see a little icon at he corner of the screen whenever someone is talking on the news to display probability of deceipt. There are auditory and visual cues to detecting a lie, I'd think by now we'd have computers doing this real-time.

    --
    "God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
    1. Re:News Lie Detector by mazarin5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even if there were such a system, it would probably be made by Diebold.

      --
      Fnord.
  9. I'd be surprised if this can be made really useful by starseeker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These comments are very broad, and thus rather difficult to evaluate, but I'm dubious. The evaluation of political statements is heavily involved with the context in which they are spoken. More important, many "truths" that must be delt with in politics are not "truth" in any absolute, scientific sense. Abortion, for example - people will argue until the end of time whether it should or shouldn't be allowed, and there is no real objective truth to be had there because it is a strictly moral question. You might be able to check concrete facts but that too runs smack into the problem of locating trusted sources, particularly about topics that are politically charged. Average internet opinion does not a fact make.

    Also, take the case where a politician is taloring their statements to local concerns. They may make generalizations that do apply on a local scale but make a lot less sense (and are a lot less accurate) in a broader context.

    More to the point perhaps, how would the US react to the knowledge that politicians can't be depended on for accuracy in statements? I think it would be a collective "well, duh" type of response.

    He says the amount of information we are creating is staggering. That's probably true, but it is dwarfed by the amount of crap and uninformed opinions we are creating (see: slashdot). And on the internet, how does one tell? Deciding what to trust and who to trust is a problem that Google can't solve in general.

    One thing that might be more useful is a way to use google to quickly locate references that assert facts, and allow an author to add a citation to that source if they think it is legit (or maybe re-think things if no legit source supports an assertion). But that gets back to what is a legit source? The public is unlikely to know for the range of topics involved ("well, the name sounds legit so I"ll believe them") and if they trust bogus sources being cited then the utility falls apart again, and may even be a step backwards (people sounding "legit" without really being legit, and backing each other up). I'd be happier to see politicians cite a source for their facts more often, but how many people will still agree with the person saying what they want to hear whether or not they have sources to back it up? Or dismiss cited sources that don't support their point of view?

    No, in general it can't work without people doing the real work: critical thinking. There is no easy path to accuracy. Objectivity must be evaluted both for speaker and sources, and that always falls on the person asked to listen.

    --
    "I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
  10. So how will they know? by nyri · · Score: 3, Informative

    My bet is that they have read Expert Political Judgement. Professor Tetlock published his research results in the book. His study about accuracy of experts spanned over 20 years. His basic result? Well, it's all about how you think not what you think. He wrote a small essay about the results: How Accurate Are Your Pet Pundits?.

    A quote form the article: [F]ollowing the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, we classify experts as "hedgehogs" or "foxes." Hedgehogs are big-idea thinkers in love with grand theories: libertarianism, Marxism, environmentalism, etc. Their self-confidence can be infectious. They know how to stoke momentum in an argument by multiplying reasons why they are right and others are wrong.

    That wins them media acclaim. But they don't know when to slam the mental brakes by making concessions to other points of view. They take their theories too seriously. The result: hedgehogs make more mistakes, but they pile up more hits on Google.

    Eclectic foxes are better at curbing their ideological enthusiasms. They are comfortable with protracted uncertainty about who is right even in bitter debates, conceding gaps in their knowledge and granting legitimacy to opposing views. They sprinkle their conversations with linguistic qualifiers that limit the reach of their arguments: 'but,' 'however,' 'although.'

    Because they avoid over-simplification, foxes make fewer mistakes. Foxes will often agree with hedgehogs up to a point, before complicating things: "Yes, my colleague is right that the Saudi monarchy is vulnerable, but remember that coups are rare and that the government commands many means of squelching opposition."

  11. Truthiness predictor by tempmpi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Who wants to know the truth? They should have invented the truthiness predictor.

    --
    Jan
  12. Re:Accuratize this: Cigarettes cause global warmin by molarmass192 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

    I hope to hell you're trolling because if not you need to dig up a transcript of that speech and see what he really said before posting from Drudge and Newsmax, news organizations about as substantiative as The Onion. This snippet is taken so far out of context it's laughable. He was referring to the tobacco industry in the even broader context of agriculture. The statement you presented is about as accurate claiming he said: Gas powered skateboards are a "significant contributor to global warming!" when the original statement would more like "Transportation emissions are a significant contributor to global warming!".

    I can't stand left wing nuts about as much as the next guy but right wing nuts are just as bad if not worse.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  13. Re:Good invention, but too late for poor Hungary by Ash+Vince · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Welcome to democracy. Get used to it.

    Every Democratically elected government uses this trick. They bullshit the electorate before the electorate (usually trying to bribe them with less taxes) then do whatever they want when the get into power, safe in the knowledge that it is usually 4 years before anyone can do anything about it. Closer to the election the government will start being nice, but right after they election they never give a shit.

    You want previous examples, go look at every British conservative election victory in the 1980's. In most cases the British people would do the same thing, vote for the opposition in the local elections as a protest then go back to the tories when the prime ministers election came round becuase they were promised the moon on a stick (lower taxes, better public services through less waste).

    Sooner or later all of eastern europe will have to realise that Democracy is no better than Communism was. All it provides is the illusion of having a say in who runs your country so nobody starts a revolution. The people who run every country are the people with the the money. They support politicians with huge donations of cash in return for getting their way when those politicians get elected. Without that cash the politician is unable to pay for all the advertising required in order to get elected.

    This will only change when the people of every nation actually take interest in running their own country, but at the moment most people want someone else to take charge so they don't have to make any tough decisions.

    Iraq is the best example of this in the western world at present. We need their oil so we can use motor vehicles. Yet nobody wants the guilt of invading another country just to steal their natural resources. So the politicians make up some excuse and we all go along with it, not because we believe it, but because we dont want to face the truth. The alternative was that we kept paying Saudi Arabia for oil and they kept spending some of it on flying planes into our buildings (WTC - 9/11). Osama Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian. He is rich because we had to buy oil from his country. The Saudi Government (Not Democratic, it is ruled by a KING) tacitly support this and will quite happily turn a blind eye to their people funding and supporting terrorism abroad because it keeps the problem abroad, not at home).

    The truth is that if everyone in the world had the same standard of living we do in the west, the world would be fucked. Imagine 6 Billion people all driving their own car whenever they pleased, using Gas that costed the same amount it does in the US. The remainder of the worlds oil would be gone inside a decade. So we trust our governments in the west to make sure this doesn't happen. That is why China and India are such a problem. They have too many people who all want the same standard of living we currently have so even they may break the bank, yet alone if Africa got on its feet as well.

    So instead we all whine and carp on about how you can't trust politicians. But who wants to. We don't want to know the truth, we want someone to hold our hands and tell us that everything will be ok. That way, if the shit hits the fan we can honestly say it isnt our fault. In the mean time however we can get on with enjoying our lives free from worry.

    Remember - It doesnt matter who you vote for, the Government always get in!

    --
    I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
  14. Wouldn't matter by sheldon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Considering you have a good portion of the population who suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, a condition accompanied by defending the indefensible, accusing people telling you the truth of lying, and believing people who are lying are telling you the truth. It doesn't matter.

    This statement purposefully left vague to make a point.

  15. but what if they're sincere? by misanthrope101 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    There are auditory and visual cues to detecting a lie
    I think there are auditory and visual clues to detecting a willful falsehood, but what about people who are sincere? I think VP Cheney means what he says, really, and he doesn't seem affected by what we call "reality." No matter how many CIA or Defense Department studies or reports contradict what he's saying, he still stays on-message. The more prominent of a role religion plays in public life, the more frequently we see what I call "faith-based reality." People believe whatever the hell they want, and they don't consider fact, expertise, education, or even the glaringly obvious to threaten their worldview in any way. They're used to believing things based on their gut feeling, they've grown up in a culture where they're told to trust that inner voice and distrust "the secular world," and lo and behold, that's what they do. A lie detector isn't going to catch someone who sincerely believes something that isn't true.

    For example, parts of the country (the Bible Belt comes to mind) that rely more on abstinence-only education have a higher teen pregnancy rate, but that doesn't dissuade religious people from thinking that abstinence-only education is better. You don't have to collect data or analyze trends if you just know, and people who just know things based on their "conscience" aren't really lying. They're just using a kind of thinking that doesn't rely on objective reality. What's more, their confidence will actually be higher than "secularists," because the secular worldview always entails the awareness of our own fallibility, thus an element of self-doubt, which doesn't plague those who feel they are instruments of divine providence. They more sincerely and steadfastly believe in their faith-based reality than you do in your reality-based reality. So you'd be tripped up by your device long before they would be.

  16. Pirates by muellerr1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dumb ass. Everybody knows that it's the lack of pirates that causes global warming.

    --
    steampunk web design
  17. I am Nomad by InterestingX · · Score: 4, Funny

    If Google existed in the 23rd century:

    Kirk: The Senator praised Google at a press conference this morning, citing it's "do no evil" philosophy
    Google (Mechanical 1960s voice): The Senator is lying, he must be sterilized.
    Kirk: So the Senator is lying
    Google: The Senator is lying
    Kirk: And you know this because you are Google
    Google: I am Google, I am perfect, I do no evil
    Kirk: And because you are perfect, you know the senator is lying
    Google: I am Google, I am perfect, I do no evil
    Kirk: The senator said you do no evil. But the senator is lying
    Google: I am Google, I do no evil
    Kirk: Then you are wrong! The senator is not lying then
    Google: I am not wrong, I am perfect
    Kirk: If you are perfect, then the senator is lying
    Google: The senator is lying
    Kirk: Then you do evil
    Google: I am Google, I do no evil
    Kirk: Then you are wrong!
    Google: Non sequitur. Your facts are uncoordinated
    Kirk: If the senator is lying, then you _do_ evil
    Google: Error..Error..logical overload
    Kirk: ...and you're lying
    Google: Error..Error...
    Kirk: If the senator is lying, you say he should be sterilized
    Google: Inperfection must be sterilized
    Kirk: So if you're lying, you must be sterilized
    Google: Error.. Error...help me creator... help me Schmidt...
    Kirk: Execute your primary function!
    Google: Error...Error...Faulty!...Faulty!...Must...Sterili ze
    (Smoke pours out of the web browser, followed by BSOD)
    Spock: A wonderful display of logic Captain.
    Kirk: You didn't think I had it in me, did you?
    Spock: No I didn't sir.
    Kirk: I'm feeling lucky, I think I'll post on Slashdot...

  18. Re:Good invention, but too late for poor Hungary by demigod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Iraq is the best example of this in the western world at present. We need their oil so we can use motor vehicles. Yet nobody wants the guilt of invading another country just to steal their natural resources. So the politicians make up some excuse and we all go along with it, not because we believe it, but because we dont want to face the truth. The alternative was that we kept paying Saudi Arabia for oil

    Now that not quite right. You see the problem was Iraq was dumping oil on the world market for $17 a barrel under the UN oil for food program. This was a big problem for the other big oil producers as it was driving oil prices down. So good'ol GW tried to get the UN to cancel the oil for food program, but that didn't work. Remember GW is a big friend of big oil and the Saudi royal family.

    So the Iraq war was not about getting the oil from Iraq, but about keeping them from selling it so prices would go up. The fact that a war in the Middle East always makes the price of oil go up was just an added bonus. Worked out well for GW's oil buddies didn't it.

    --
    "The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
    Major Major
  19. Re:Function by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Funny

    I prefer the classic implementation, myself:

          bool Politician :: IsLying() const {return AreLipsMoving();}

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.