Political Fact-Checking, According To Google

Does Google have a lie detector in the works? Probably not, but a comment from CEO Eric Schmidt definitely turned a few heads. As a Reuters article stated, “he predicted that truth predictor’ software would, within five years, hold politicians to account.'”

Schmidt seems to have a fascination with this sort of fact-checking. At the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, Schmidt mentioned one politician’s assertion that there are more outhouses than TiVos. The CEO made it his mission to verify (or disprove) the claim, and found that although it was true in the recent past, it was no longer accurate.

Reuters quoted him saying, much more recently, “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.’ We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability.”

Of course, voters can already do a little fact-checking on their own, but Schmidt thinks it will become more organized (and more significant) in the future. “The Internet has largely filled a role of funding for politicians . . . but it has not yet affected elections,” he said. “It clearly will.”

This belief may well lead to the creation of a “politician bull-sh*t detector,” as Andy Beal described it. Such a device may, according to Beal, use “a complex algorithm that checks past historical facts, voice inflexions, and any faint odors originating from the direction of the politician’s mouth.”

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Doug is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.