Veracity Values
March 2, 2009
How do you know what is true ?
As a third party, how do you know that something is objectively true as opposed to subjectively true ?
Can you have such as thing as a truth ‘Richter scale’ ?
There are technological tools out there that should be able to help us with verification, even before the semantic web breaks through. Text mining should be able to pull out the key words and phrases of a document. You need to find a set of rules to feed the miner, but apart from that the issues with text mining seem to me to be logistical these days. Feed those results into the relevant search engines and databases and you should be able to automate the evidence gathering process.
Rate the relevance and ‘authority’ of the source and you could derive a ‘veracity value’ for the document.
Place some security around that veracity value and you have a ‘veracity certificate’ that has links to the evidence and a sliding scale of verifiable-ness.
The problem comes in identifying objective vs subjective. For example; take two academic papers, one on the physical qualities of a new metal alloy the other on Mayan cultural artifacts and their relevance to modern day Mexico. They have equal numbers of citations, equally authoritative reviewers, equal external coverage in conference proceedings and equal numbers and quality of references. How does a reader know which is objective and which subjective in nature ?
That’s something that humans do all the time, and frequently get wrong, but that AI has yet to approach.
Perhaps we leave that to the human for the moment and leave the automation at veracity.
The business model writes itself, so if anyone wants to try it get in touch 
Catching up with the Digital World
February 28, 2009
This is a keynote speech delivered by Richard Sambrook of the BBC at the Media Re:Public Forum held at USC Annenberg in March 2008.
Interesting summary of the state of the art (a year ago), for me that’s pretty up to date. I’m on a bit of a catch-up right now.
I think that Richard’s concentration by omission on the conflict between objective and subjective realities is actually, though probably old news, still very relevant. The questioners (after 36:00) kind of prove that with their takes on his presentation.
I think that (subjectively of course) there is a set of tools out there allowing easy subjective reporting. The objectivity side of things is something that must be cultural.
For those interested in the objective truth, objectivity can be a rasion d’etre to the detriment of real politique. Whether driven by a moral purpose that information should be correct and hang the consequences, or whether they are fundamentally positive about the human condition. First hand reporting and hard data will always be a superior method of moving towards a better AKA a truer world.
For those whose focus is influencing change, whether it be getting the litter bins emptied more often or a major national political shift (some would argue that amounts to the same thing in the UK), maybe the weight of conviction is the lever that must be used to get closer to a subjectively ideal world.
Do we want Spock or Bones as our information go-to guy ? Spock may be hard work and not much fun at a party, but you know that you’re going to get the facts. Bones could be telling you want he wants your to hear or what he thinks you want to hear. Maybe that doesn’t matter in most circumstances. Maybe in some situations you want the passion. Maybe you need both. In either case you probably need to know which you are getting.
