Know-It-All Robot Shuts Down Dubious Family Texts (wsj.com)

Biting your tongue at yet another questionable article shared in your message group? Add artificial-intelligence fact-checker Meiyu, she will jump in with 'False.' From a report: The artificial-intelligence bot will interject in real time when she detects posts about the news, pointing out factual errors and alternative interpretations. The technology, created by Taiwanese developers, is a step ahead of most fact-checking apps, including versions offered in Brazil and Indonesia, which don't jump into conversations. Other popular fact-checkers, such as Snopes in the U.S., are public databases that users consult for reviews of news items. Meiyu quickly became hot in Taiwan, which had just gone through divisive local elections and is rife with rumors of China's interference in social media. The bot now has more than 110,000 users on the Japanese messaging app Line, which covers about 90% of the mobile-messaging market in Taiwan.

Comments

I want one...

[MikeRT]

That detects people asserting logical fallacies and tells them that they don't know what they're talking about.

Ought to be real fun with the I Fucking Love Science crowd when they get told that "scientific consensus" is a euphemism for argumentum ad popolum.

Or with people in general when it says:

"Calling you a dishonest, good for nothing shitbag is just an insult. To be argumentum ad hominem he'd have to say that you being a dishonest, good for nothing shitbag is specifically the grounds on which your argument is wrong. Even asserting that facts in contention ought to be held in contention until independently verified because you're a dishonest shitbag is not argumentum ad hominem."

Re:I want one...

[Aighearach]

Scientific Consensus would be argumentum ad popolum if it was true that consensus determines facts, however, it does not. It merely flags particular theories as known-to-be-accepted-in-the-mainstream.

Science is a process, not a set of theories or conclusions. Therefore, you identified the correct fallacy in the argument, but in the wrong part of the argument. Where they're engaging in argumentum ad popolum is when they're saying that because there is a "scientific consensus," therefore the body of the consensus is also correct, or worse, sometimes they'll even want to call it "proven." But science does not and can not attempt to "prove" things. Science is merely a process by which you can attempt to repeat things; the personal goal of scientists is often to discover the "why" of things, but science doesn't actually do that. And the good ones know it! Their personal goal of understanding "why" is separate from their professional goals of taking additional steps in a process. But conclusions are not one of the steps that is even part of the process, so consensus about what the current-best-answer is doesn't even touch on or support coming to conclusions about it!

"I think, therefore I am" is a complete failure, but because the lesson is valuable (if I don't exist it doesn't matter if I'm wrong, if I do exist but believe I don't I won't be motivated to survive, therefore belief in existence is the only answer with potential utility) we also value scientific consensus; not because it is ever correct, or capable of being correct, but because it supports additional attempts at understanding.

Re:I want one...

[gweihir]

Scientific consensus is science. It means a lot of smart people have looked and did a) find convincing evidence for it and b) failed to find any reasonable contradictory evidence. As a result, scientific consensus is nothing like ordinary consensus. This faulty reasoning is however a favorite of anti-science people that do not like the facts that science finds and think that if they just believe hard enough in their own fantasies, reality changes.

Re:This could replace Trump entirely?

[lgw]

Awesome, do it now. The criminal fraud Presidency needs corrected.

And this is of course the problem with bots like this. The "facts" will always conform to a particular political world view - that's just how humans work. Imagine your feed where a bot installed by a big Trump fan labeled stuff as "fake news" whenever it disagreed with Trump. And that's exactly how it works in China. It isn't some hypothetical situation here: government control of "fact checking" is the very heart of modern totalitarianism.

People have these naive ideas about "facts" being objective and bias free, and that's great, but fact-checkers never are. The farther down the rabbit hole a society goes, the more blatant this effect becomes.

Re:This could replace Trump entirely?

[Shotgun]

Worse than that, some "facts" are impossible to establish.

We all now know that Jussie Smollett is a liar, but is Ilham Omar really an antisemite? That is, was her apology sincere?
We know that Trump publicly asked Russia to find Hillary's emails, but did he know if they had them, or was he sarcastically playing on the news of the day?

Most people's version of "truth" will depend on how they interpret vague things that are essentially unknowable.

Re:"Facts" ... who watches the watchmen?

[Anubis IV]

That is all there is. Sorry.
Only usefulness. No absolute truth(TM).

I love it when people declare as an absolutism that there's no such thing as absolute truth. Rarely do you see anyone contradict themselves in so few words.

Awesome

[Locke2005]

What happens when you send it a continuous stream of Trump's tweets and speeches?

Re:This could replace Trump entirely?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Their suspicion of the bots being rigged has some merit. The EU runs a small bureau to (manually) combat fake news in a similar manner, but it has been caught out for being wrong about several news items. And it looks like it wasn’t a case of honest mistakes, but politically motivated spin.

These bots can be an awesome tool to achieve the same on a grand scale. Simply teach them to sniff out discussions about truths you want suppressed, and have the bots chime in with carefully crafted official narrative (thruthiness)

Re:Cue the handwringing

[Archangel Michael]

The problem with the MSM is that it repeatedly sides with "narratives" (story telling) and not with just telling us what happened. It is the story telling (fibbing) that gets them into trouble.

All one has to do is look at the two recent cases(Covington Catholic, Smollett), where the "narrative" that was being told didn't actually happen, and certainly not the way it was being reported initially in the MSM. In both cases the "narrative" was the story, not the actual events.

People want to understand why "Fake News" is a thing need only look to these two events to see that it does, indeed happen. Both these "stories" were "fake".

The MSM doesn't even try to be fair anymore. And because of that, a large portion of the population doesn't believe them any more. They are, themselves, to blame here. The difference between a Hannity and a Don Lemon is that Hannity has a clear agenda, and doesn't hide it behind "objective' narrative, that isn't true. That actually makes Hannity (or even Maddow) more reliable. Not because he isn't wrong, but rather because when he is wrong, because it can be blamed on his narrative. Don Lemon has a narrative he tries to hide (that he is objective) and that makes him less reliable largely because the narrative is false.

Re: Trump can't catch Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's review: Lies about what Obama said due to bias. Convicts a false and mistaken phrasing due to bias. Pretends outrage when Trump is literally quoted and downplays lies.

Called on bias.

Posts link to video where Obama did not use the words quoted.

Yep, your bias has detached you from reality.

Or did you want Obama to pass a law to force your plan to remain in effect forever?

I feel for them

[nospam007]

I'm married to such a bot.