Robots feeding fact checks? Soon.
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R2-D2, pictured, won't be checking claims. But there is research afoot to have computers speed fact-checking (photo by Denis Poroy/Invision/AP).
Are we really moving to robots doing fact-checks?
Close to it, we learned from authorities including Chengkai Li.
Li, a University of Texas-Arlington professor, is getting closer to helping journalists determine which presidential debate statements warrant fact-checking. He's enlisted university students and members of the public to hone his team’s compilation of potentially checkable claims made in the U.S. presidential debates from 1960 through 2012 as part of the ClaimBuster project, which Li describes as using "computational power to do tasks that are tedious and time-consuming for fact-checkers, such as finding claims by politicians that should be checked."
Our Sources
News analysis, "Will robots take over fact-checking the information overload?," Austin American-Statesman, Aug. 9, 2015
