Could technology like that in Siri help us detect political BS?
If there was ever a truth in politics, it’s that politicians sometimes stretch the truth. And while fact-checking has been, up to this point, largely a people-driven enterprise, technology may be coming to our aid soon to assist in recognizing when, and if, what we’re hearing is BS.
How so? A graduate student at MIT is developing a new technology that utilizes natural language processing — the same technology at the heart of Siri — to help process and check statements from politicians, political action committees and, perhaps, even news organizations themselves against databases such as those from factcheck.org to test their truthfulness. The student, Dan Schultz, calls his project “truth goggles,” which will come in the form of a browser plug-in that would highlight passages or statements where the truth might be stretched a bit.
Source: gigaom.com
