Google CEO Predicts Internet Truth Serum for Politicians
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by Mike Zazaian October 5, 2006 - 12:43pm, 1 Comment
According to Schmidt the software would check statements and facts against a database of historical data to see whether or not it’s correct.
One of my messages to them (politicians) is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting ‘is this true or false,’
said Schmidt in the interview. We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability.
Of course the problem with such software is the subjectivity of truth. While programming may hinge around the ones and zeroes of binary, but there’s often more to a statement than pure truth or pure falsity. How exactly Google plans to integrate a truth detector into the software remains to be seen, but the genesis of the software should instigate a significant change in the way voters accept statements made by politicians. In turn, such software would likely force politicians to be more truthful and straight-forward with voters, brightening the current state of our political climate.
Added Schmidt, It (the internet) has broken down the barriers that exist between people and information, effectively democratizing access to human knowledge. This has made us much more powerful as individuals.
[via The Financial Times]
Something makes me automatically suspicious about schemes like this which propose to tag information on the basis of its authority or whether it represents hate speech. My thoughts are generally that the people themselves should decide and not have their information filtered through some kind of rating system.
By extension this announcement makes me wary as well. Without knowing how its supposed to work I can imagine only that if its hackable then someone might be in a very enviable position to shape the public’s perception about the honesty of any particular person.
G Banville