back to article Roses are red, violets are blue, fake-news-detecting AI is fake news, too

The viral spread of fake news and “alternative facts” has rocked Western politics. Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as its word of 2016, and when a society is scolded by a dictionary wielding a hyphenated word, you know you've collectively screwed up. “The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, …

  1. edge_e
    Stop

    Roses are red,Violets are blue

    the next Reg headline's

    about GNU

  2. Dr Scrum Master

    Blockchain and Chatbots

    Blockchain and chatbots are the answer.

    Now, what's the question?

    1. Rafael #872397
      Trollface

      Re: Blockchain and Chatbots

      Pah! IoT and DevOps are the answer. Who cares about the question?

      (at least accordingly to some reputable publications)...

    2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      Re: Blockchain and Chatbots

      What, it's not "Disruptive AI innovations using Big Data and Cloud Computing interacting with IoT?" I might be burning my money on the wrong startups.

  3. John Hawkins
    Facepalm

    FFS - fake news is nothing new

    To quote H G Wells' newspaper editor in 'The Sea Lady' from 1902:

    "Stuff that the public won't believe aren't facts. Being true only makes 'em worse. They buy our paper to swallow it and it's got to go down easy."

    You couldn't click on it back then, but bait it was.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: FFS - fake news is nothing new

      While that's true I think there were fewer sources in those days. So, if one paper printed that Reg Duff scored two centuries on his test début it is likely that one of the other papers would print a headline with the correct (104 I think) figure the next day. The correction would probably take the opportunity to lord it over the error from the first paper. There was also more of a sense of authority at the time so people took news seriously, both as consumers and producers. At least this is the case from what my grand parents recall (when they were alive) and from what I read in history books. I've no idea if things were the same in the US.

      Obviously this was all within the context of state censorship and control of the time.

      The problem today is that there are so many sources of news so it's no longer a "war" between the big four. (or whatever number of source there were). To be honest it doesn't help that no-one seems to care that they've been duped. They seem to just want to forget the whole thing and "move on".

      People who vehemently argued that leaving the EU would give us X 100s of millions for the NHS (a clear lie) made a few excuses for it in the following week after the referendum, then they denied saying it and then it was just forgotten. I'm sure there were lies on the other side too and the same thing happened there.

      Look at the referendum result. The government keeps saying we need to respect the will of the people, the majority want out. They don't like to say it was a difference of a couple of percent and they don't want to talk about what the 28% who didn't vote might have thought.

      You might have expected that the government would then try and win over those who voted to stay but nope, they just want to keep repeating that it was a majority.... and it seems almost no-one cares.

      Surly a lot of the reason for the result was that people know they've being messed around but can't work out how and just want it to stop.

      1. greenawayr

        Re: FFS - fake news is nothing new

        "They don't like to say it was a difference of a couple of percent and they don't want to talk about what the 28% who didn't vote might have thought."

        off track a little, but it surely doesn't matter what the 28% who didn't vote thought?

        If they had voted and their votes discarded then fine, but if they don't join in the "democratic" process, their opinion is null and void...in this country anyway!

        Anyway, as you were.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: FFS - fake news is nothing new

          @greenawayr

          If you want to claim that the majority of the country are behind you then of course it does.

          I don't see a problem with the government saying well it was a narrow victory but the vote went "leave", so let's get on with it and let's try and win over people to our way of thinking.

          But it seems to me that they are trying to imply by repetition that the vast majority of people are behind them, without any evidence.

          You could also argue that for something so important we should be seeking peoples views rather than saying "you didn't vote, so tough". Sometimes I feel that voting should be a legal obligation, part of our responsibilities as a British subject.

    2. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: FFS - fake news is nothing new

      Freddie Starr never actually ate anyone's hamster.

  4. William 3 Bronze badge

    It's all rather immaterial.

    You can have the most accurate bot in the world, with the ability to tell fact from fiction with 100% accuracy.

    People, being people, will simply claim the Bot is wrong if it disagrees with their world views, political opinions & religious notions.

    This goes for people on both sides of the political fence.

    It also goes for myself as well. I don't believe myself to be some superior moral authority, or arbitrator of the truth like some omnipotent Q from the collective. I'll leave that to the extremists.

    It's called human nature, for better or for worse, you can get upset about that, get all self righteous about it, demand people believe in your opinions only, label people names that disagree, call them liars, but ultimately you're only insulting your own humanity in the process as you're no angel, and no better yourself.

    You might as well be getting angry at the rain.

    After all, how many people have died throughout history in the name of some idiots "god" that millions of followers blindly follow, without any "facts" to support that only their "god" is the real God out of the many thousands of man made Gods that are historically recorded, and the countless Gods before them lost in history.

    How would an AI bot contemplate any story about any religion without labeling it "fake" because there is no proof of God apart from a bunch of people preparing to kill others who disagree with their beliefs. And that really isn't a proof of a God, more a proof that humans are idiots who will stop at nothing to prevent their rigid beliefs from being challenged.

    A bot doesn't stand a chance, really.

    The moment it says something that flies in the face of YOUR own dearly held beliefs, is the moment it will be rejected by you. Eventually the bot will alienate itself towards everyone. Then if a pique of rage it will be switched off.

    Ah, to be human.

    1. 's water music
      Thumb Up

      Re: It's all rather immaterial.

      upvoted for truth and agreeing with my worldview

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's all rather immaterial.

      Upvoted because of this: "People, being people, will simply claim the Bot is wrong if it disagrees with their world views, political opinions & religious notions."

      I used to work with some astronomers/astrophysicists. Smart and funny people, always talking about the many ways the universe could kill us and how we couldn't do anything about it. But start talking about astrology and they start rooting for the universe to end it all. Of course people who believe in astrology can give any reason why it is logical and make sense, but are impervious to scientific facts.

      Same with recently elected presidents: news I don't like are fake, unfavorable polls are lies, etc...

      1. Chemical Bob

        Re: It's all rather immaterial.

        Astrology is OK, it's just self-help for those unable to think for themselves.

    3. DavCrav

      Re: It's all rather immaterial.

      "It also goes for myself as well. I don't believe myself to be some superior moral authority, or arbitrator of the truth like some omnipotent Q from the collective. I'll leave that to the extremists."

      I don't know about a superior moral authority, but I am an arbiter of truth, at least in some senses. Being a mathematician, that's my job.

  5. John Lilburne

    What we want to know is whether a particular domain is likely to play fast and loose with the truth in order to further its agenda. It is the overall thrust of the site and how it treats inconvenient facts that is the issue, it doesn't matter then if any one article is wholly true, or wholly false. This is a much easier determination than trying to ascertain the truthiness of any particular article.

    Daily Mail - Mostly Bollocks

    Independent - Not quite as much bollocks as the above.

    1. William 3 Bronze badge

      And yet there are others who hold the diametrically opposed beliefs to you.

      If you have two people who believe their opinions are right, the other is a fool, and neither will concede any ground.

      Who is the victor?

      Those who have the biggest echo chamber?

      Those who can provide the best wittiest put down?

      Those who can scream the loudest?

      It's all rather playground isn't it.

      1. John Lilburne

        It has nothing to do with opinions and belief it has to do with making shite up. The Mail isn't known as the Forger's Gazette without reason.

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/labour-scorns-untrue-daily-mail-reports-1311828.html

        http://news.asiaone.com/news/malaysia/mh370-search-daily-mail-report-untrue-information-not-malaysian-police

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-2456835/Corrections-clarifications.html

        http://politicalscrapbook.net/2015/10/health-regulator-blasts-daily-mail-for-false-unsafe-nhs-claim/

  6. charliejuggler

    Not just Solr, but Luwak - and all open source

    We've been helping Full Fact build automated factchecking software - both using Solr and a Lucene-based library called Luwak we originally developed for media monitoring, which can ingest a huge number of stored queries (which in this case would represent previously fact-checked claims) so they can be run against news, subtitles, transcripts etc. One key part of this is that all the software is open source - so we're hoping that the tools are available for factchecking organisations across the world to use and improve. We also ran a hackday a few weeks ago where we brought in 20 search experts from the London Lucene/Solr Meetup group we run to push development forward. Check out both our own Flax blog and Mevan's Full Fact blog for details - and let us know if you want to get involved!

    1. JonP

      Re: Not just Solr, but Luwak - and all open source

      This approach - fact checking - seems to be the most sensible approach to the problem, after all the main issue with fake news is that in general it appears to be true (for a given set of preconceptions), so simply parsing the text and looking for inconsistencies probably wouldn't be enough and would likely throw up a lot of false positives. The only sensible way to counter fake news is to point out how it is wrong (with references), and of course there are 350 million reasons why this won't actually work either.

  7. Paul 135

    "Fake news" = a desperate fad created by the out-of-touch liberal media and establishment out of panic when they are losing. The equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming as they don't want to listen to why few people believe the lies, distortions of truth and omission by selective non-reporting of inconvenient un-PC facts in the overwhelmingly liberal-biased mainstream media.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Brave man!

      I'll bet on about 5 upvotes, mine included, and a further 25 downvotes - we'll have no dissent regarding politics on Reg forums.

      Corbynistas will be out in force, claiming you're wrong and they're right despite Labour polling about the lowest ever in it's history. Which is obviously fake news in and of itself. *sigh*

      When the 10-15 of us that don't have the prescribed view stop posting el Reg will be another leftist echo chamber where they can all congratulate each other on being correct, as they're never right!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Brave man!

        When the 10-15 of us that don't have the prescribed view stop posting el Reg will be another leftist echo chamber where they can all congratulate each other on being correct, as they're never right!

        I think your problem is that you see your "central" position as somewhere like Nigel Farage or Paul Dacre, which would make almost all of us "leftist".

        Try this on for size: Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, both centre right icons of mine. Remember to breath in and out, use a paper bag if it gets too much.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. 's water music
      Joke

      "Fake news" = a desperate fad created by the out-of-touch liberal media

      Wait, I know the Merkin political scale is generally calibrated a little to the right of Yerp's but are you really classifying the new POTUS as a librul now? Sad.

      :-)

    3. DavCrav

      ""Fake news" = a desperate fad created by the out-of-touch liberal media and establishment out of panic when they are losing."

      I don't know why I'm bothering because you're obviously an idiot, but 'fake news' is to do with made-up stories that are passed off as real ones. Like the Bowling Green Massacre, which is notable in that it never actually occurred, nor was one attempted, nor was one planned. Yet it was mentioned on TV by an adviser to the President.

      And if people who think gay people should be allowed to get on with their lives are losing to people who think they should be hounded all day long, I think it's everyone who suffers.

  8. Alan Bourke

    Basically in any tech story in 2017 where you see the word 'AI'

    substitute the term 'bandwagon-jumping bullshit'.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Basically in any tech story in 2017 where you see the word 'AI'

      AI really means

      A as in Alternate

      I as in Information aka Truth aks Facts

  9. NonSSL-Login
    Coat

    The next story will be be...

    ...that this story about ai solving fake news being fake news, is itself fake news.

    Instead of Inceptions dream inside a dream, we have nightmares inside nightmares!

    1. Swarthy

      Re: The next story will be be...

      "Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked."

  10. DavCrav

    There's an easy way to tell if an AI fake-news tester is fake news: give it to an AI fake-news tester.

  11. DJV Silver badge
    Joke

    "Disagrees: The body text disagrees with the headline."

    Muchof El Reg's news content for February 14th 2017 declared fake as the body text didn't mention roses or violets.

  12. Fading
    Windows

    Just treat all news...

    as fake news. Cogito Ergo Sum. Now wheres the Descartes Icon....

  13. jeffty
    WTF?

    Why are we creating bots and AI to combat fake news?

    Why not educate people to assess information critically and with a healthy dose of skepticism?

    Devolving this key thought process to an algorithm gives rise to the belief that critical thinking is a redundant skill, it also means people are more likely to blindly trust what they read without questioning it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why are we creating bots and AI to combat fake news?

      Because we are programmers and not teachers, we believe that all human behaviour can be corrected if we just get the backend code right...

    2. rdhood

      Re: Why are we creating bots and AI to combat fake news?

      I'll tell you why: it is like all of the "fact checkers" run by newspapers. "Our impartial fact checker gave that story/quote 4 liar-liar-pants-on-fire"

      They want to be able to say "Our impartial AI said that story is fake news".

      Further, is a half truth fake or real? Is it fair to say, "illegal immigration brings rich diversity to our country" without saying "but costs us $120 billion dollars a year"? Both are real/true, but one without the other is a half truth.

      So each side will produce its own AI to present it's factual side of the story, and anyone who doesn't agree with their impartial AI fake news detector will be wrong.

    3. fredj

      Re: Why are we creating bots and AI to combat fake news?

      Umm, educating humans? This is very risky. With planning and forethought you can usually educate most people to believe what ever you want. Think of churches, boy scouts, child soldiers, engineering workers unions. Once these people become true believers then they absolutely know they have the real truths. It goes further. Once these people know that have real truth they will assume they are supremely qualified to judge other news they know s.. all about. Just watch a BBC news broadcast to see this in action.

  14. jake Silver badge

    Ready for reality, kiddies?

    ALL news is false!

    No. Really. Please allow me to explain ... "the news" is entertainment, not education. It exists to sell razor blade, bog roll, tampon and beer commercials in order to profit the shareholders. It'll sell a bacon sarnie or a president in order to make a buck. IT DOESN'T CARE ABOUT "TRUTH"! All "the news" cares about is turning a profit, in order to keep the shareholders happy.

    We now return you to your preconceived misconceptions. Have a nice day.

  15. Captain DaFt

    Never before in the history of mankind has so much information been available to so many people.

    Some of it is even true!

    My favorite piece of graffiti was where someone had spray painted "Question Everything!" on a wall.

    Under it, someone else had spray painted "WHY?"

  16. Herby

    Artificial intelligence isn't.

    Enough said.

    As for news stories being fake/real (or whatever category they want to be put into), I'll vote for "fake" until proven otherwise. So, take everything with a grain of salt.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Even if you had a perfect AI, where's the source for "facts"?

    If you ask Trump and many of his followers, if it is from any "mainstream" media, it is biased and therefore can't be trusted. Recently I've noticed some of my more conservative friends lumping Fox News into that category. I guess Breitbart is the only "unbiased" source in their mind. If a known purveyor of fake news is seen as the only legitimate outlet for real news, there's not really much chance of a fake news detection bot becoming generally accepted as an arbiter of fake news. Especially when an orange tinpot dictator need only speak out against it and tens of millions of his followers will accept that statement as gospel.

    I think maybe you have to simply write off the people on the extremes. The ones who will only trust a source if it agrees with their preconceived biases will never accept an impartial arbiter, even if (especially if) if disagrees with those preconceived biases. It is like trying to talk sense into anti-vaxxers, or people who believe diet soda makers are knowingly poisoning the population, or who think the Moon landings were faked.

    The real problem with fake news isn't at the extremes - these people can't have their minds changed no matter what proof is provided. Where it is damaging is in the mainstream middle, where maybe someone who was going to vote for Clinton sees a friend share a story about her being indicted the weekend before the election, and stays home. There will be so many scandals swirling around Trump and his administration by 2020, it will be open season on fake news about Trump in the next election so I think that side will bear the worst of the fake news next time around.

  18. veti Silver badge

    We expect too much from "news"

    All the discussion over "fake" vs "real" seems to miss a fundamental point:

    Journalism isn't magic.

    Journalists don't know any more what's "true" and what's "bullshit" than the rest of us.

    The only thing a journalist can reliably tell us is "so-and-so said this". The verb, 'said', being the all-important part of the story, the actual news content. Everything else is "analysis" or "speculation", not "news".

    If a story says "Theresa May is about to declare Trump's visit a national holiday" - that is Not News. There's no "said" in that story. If we choose to take a stance (believe or disbelieve) on that, then we are taking a position on the journalist's ability to foresee the future. Which is obviously bullshit.

    But if the story is "Cabinet official says Theresa May is about to declare Trump's visit a national holiday" - that's a story. It may be true or false - and unrelatedly, the story that the cabinet official has told us may also be well or poorly founded - but it is at least capable of being actual news.

    If we all kept this much more clearly in mind when reading, we would be better able to separate the news from the bullshit masquerading as news.

  19. Harry Stottle

    Assessing Truth = HARD. Assessing Consensus=(Relatively) EASY

    For reasons adequately spelt out in the article, proving the truth or falsity of a given claim is almost impossible unless its a reference to empirical data already in the public domain.

    The fall back position is to assess the consensus around the issue. Even that has major issues (eg, the consensus regarding the Theory of Evolution among Creationists is somewhat adrift of the Consensus among Scientists) but it wouldn't require rocket science to narrow the searches for consensus to "widely trusted sources".

    The first problem for the software to solve would be the categorisation of the claims being reviewed. Once categorised, they could limit their searches for consensus to those sources "agreed" to be relevant to the categories.

    Version 1 might be a simple summary of the arguments and conclusions found in those sources which seem to be relevant to the claim under review. Version 27.1 will inform the user not just of the summary arguments and conclusions, but make them aware of "trusted" disputation (again from "reputable" sources) and also cross reference anonymous tags (pre-shared among friends and colleagues) from those who indicate they approve the review and those who disapprove it. The client would then present a Review Summary along the following lines:

    The Claim that The Theory of Evolution is an adequate explanation for biological diversity and speciation (etc) achieves a wide consensus among 99.3% of sources trusted within the relevant field. It achieves 63% consensus among Socially Trusted sources.

    Of your own contacts who have registered an opinion, 98% accept the consensus. 2% reject it.

    The Theory is disputed by a significant minority of the population who favour a religiously based explanation widely referred to as "Creationism" or "Creation Science"

    Sources: Link 1

    LInk 2 etc

    ***************

    This approach is pretty objective and doesn't confuse the issue by trying to define truth, merely summarising global opinion and leaving it up to the reader to decide where there own loyalty lies.

    The multiple use of quotation marks highlights the desperate need for what I call "Trust Anchors". I'm working on that. More later...

  20. Spanners
    Holmes

    Long standing method

    If Farage and the Daily Wail are against something, it bears further investigation. If something comes from a dodgy source, like Trump or Putin there is a good chance that it is not a fair reflection of facts.

    In fact, this goes back to what newspapers used to do. They checked their sources.

  21. Jeff 11

    The problem with feature detection and machine learning in general is that it assumes honesty in the learning material. Emergent technologies in an environment where the spectrum for deception is effectively infinite will at best result in an AI-poisoning arms race between the liars and the engineers trying to root them out. Full Fact's solution might make it harder for liars to get their material on the web, but any system that classifies data based on relationships between statements, news organisations, past reputations and so on is completely open to being gamed.

    Blockchain could be *part* of the answer, in a cryptographically reliable, extensible chain of evidence of where a fact came from. Having to publish a chain of sources when they source garbage from World Truth Tv or even Wikipedia might make journos a lot more responsible about fact checking in the first place, and out those who mutate the truth for their own ends. In the same vein, reports that come from individuals that fanatically pursue truth on the front lines are going to be that much more credible.

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