Google Has Developed an Internet Lie Detector

 Artificial Intelligence  

Google researchers have created a system that attempts to rank websites based on their factual accuracy, rather than their popularity—essentially a lie detector for the Internet.

Google researchers have published a paper where they propose a way to rank Internet search results by their factual accuracy, not their popularity—effectively running web content through an algorithmic lie detector.

Despite the vagaries you might expect in determining the objective validity of data, the researchers contend that it is not too difficult for computers to determine whether a given statement is true or false. As the researchers quote Isaac Watts in their paper, “Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.”

"Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks."

In order to evaluate a stated fact, the system only requires two things: the fact and a reference work to compare it to. Google already has the beginnings of that reference work, in the form of its Knowledge Graph — the artificial intelligence behind the search results displaying “February 12, 1948” when you search for “Ray Kurzweil birthday,” or “James Naismith” when you search “who invented basketball?”

Related articles Google Once Again Shows That It Is Serious About Making The Singularity A Reality  Inside Google  Jeff Hawkins Talks Building Brains

The system in the research paper uses a sophisticated probabilistic model that jointly estimates the correctness of extractions and source data, and the trustworthiness of source. Instead of counting incoming links Google's new system could count the number of "facts" in the page.

Each source is then analysed for how many lies it has and scored on that using something called a "Knowledge-Based Trust" score. The researchers used Google's giant "Knowledge Vault" database to qualify the information.

Google's lie detector isn't currently used when you run a search. At this point it is a research project. “We don’t have any specific plans to implement it in our products. We publish hundreds of research papers every year,” Google representatives told Business Insider.


SOURCE  New Scientist

By 33rd Square

Embed