Autocorrect
The Atlantic|June 2019

How advances in real-time fact-checking might improve our politics

Jonathanan Rauch
Autocorrect

IT’S FEBRUARY 2019, and I’m waiting to see whether a robot will call the president of the United States a liar.

I have tuned in to the State of the Union address, a speech that I haven’t missed more than a couple of times in my four decades of adulthood. Some addresses were soaring, some were slogs, and one, a magisterial performance by Ronald Reagan, was thrilling, because I watched it in the House chamber, from a press- gallery perch right behind the president. But I have never had the sense of suspense I feel now, as I sit staring not at a TV, but at a password-protected website called FactStream. I log in and find myself facing a plain screen with a video player. It looks rudimentary, but it might be revolutionary.

At the appointed time, President Donald Trump comes into view. Actually, not at precisely the appointed time; my feed is delayed by about 30 seconds. In that interval, a complicated transaction takes place. First, a piece of software—a bot, in effect— translates the president’s spoken words into text. A second bot then searches the text for factual claims, and sends each to a third bot, which looks at an online database to determine whether the claim (or a related one) has previously been verified or debunked by an independent fact-checking organization. If it has, the software generates a chyron (a caption) displaying the previously fact-checked statement and a verdict: true, false, not the whole story, or whatever else the fact-checkers concluded. If Squash, as the system is code-named, works, I will see the president’s truthfulness assessed as he speaks—no waiting for post-speech reportage, no mental note to Google it later. All in seconds, without human intervention. If it works.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 2019 من The Atlantic.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 2019 من The Atlantic.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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