Slashdot Mirror
Tech Companies Looking Into Sarcasm Detection
Nerval's Lobster writes "Now here's the greatest thing ever: French tech firm Spotter has apparently devised an analytics platform capable of identifying sarcastic comments, according to the BBC. Spotter's platform scans social media and other sources to create reputation reports for clients such as the EU Commission and Air France. As with most analytics packages that determine popular sentiment, the software parses semantics, heuristics and linguistics. However, automated data-analytics systems often have a difficult time with some of the more nuanced elements of human speech, such as sarcasm and irony — an issue that Spotter has apparently overcome to some degree, although company executives admit that their solution isn't perfect. (Duh.) Spotter isn't alone: IBM, Salesforce, and other IT vendors are hard at work on analytics software that can more perfectly determine when you're mouthing off, you little punks. In theory, sarcasm detection can help with customer service, and judging how well products are doing on the open market... and we all know it's going to work perfectly, right? Nothing could possibly go wrong with automated platforms built to assess the nuances of human speech."
Sarcasm is very frequently indicated by nuances that aren't transmitted through text. If humans have trouble getting sarcasm out of text, why should an algorithm do any better with the same set of data?
What we really need is a lie detector, a spam detector, and a troll detector
Extra points for the spam detector, THAT is what is most sorely needed, and what is so inadequately provided thus far.