Google’s Truth Detector
Reuters today released an interesting story about Google’s plans to build a probability machine that could detect whether politicians were lying. It’s a great idea, but there are several limitations to a system like this:
1. Google can only index existing records. It would be relatively simple, conceptually, to fact-check a President’s speech or documents like the 9/11 commission report. It would be impossible, however, to detect things like the Republican party’s cover-up of a child-molesting congressman, unless they somehow had all email and chat transcripts available to them. If that happens, then we’ve got bigger problems.
2. In another interesting case of the neural pathways being carved out online, Digg readers responded to this story almost immediately with a discussion of Net Neutrality. Time to break out those mesh networks, kids.
All that said, I think this is a fantastic idea.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:33 am
About the Foley issue, I believe that anyone who wants to make it a partisan political issue for political gain is just sick, sick, sick. I think it is becoming clear that if there was a cover up it was on both sides of the isle and just goes to underscore that congress is currently broken. I think that\’s all I have to say to that.
As for Google Truth, it appears to be one more information tool that will be misunderstood, misused and abused. I\’m not holding my breath that it will be any shining beacon of light. Technology can be powerful, but only if you understand its limitations. Human nature will ultimately dictate how it is used.