The Internet and globalization brought hordes of information with it, but unfortunately no easy way of verifying the truth or validity of all those search pages. How clearly did we see the consequences in 2016, when the US election results baffled, well, basically everyone!

In a world where ‘Reality Hacking’ is now a thing, we need all the help we can get. Fake news and targeted propaganda are altering peoples’ perception of reality. Now, the latest innovation in real-time speech processing software is making live TV monitoring possible, something which gave developers huge headaches five years ago. Statements on social media can also be instantly fact-checked using the same technology. Broadcasters are grabbing this new add-on as a competitive differentiator, and rightly so.

Even tech giants are realizing that they need to make it easier for users to deal with the deluge of ‘news’ that comes their way every day. Google is apparently in the process of tweaking its algorithm so that results are displayed based on their fact-checked score, which means that search optimization will soon be obsolete.

Experts estimate that in about two years, we’ll have a perfect ‘symbiotic’ relationship – human judgement and AI/machine learning capabilities will be protecting us from blatant lies and untruths. Everything in the public media space will be run through a full fact-checking cycle that monitors and spots claims, checks them, and publishes the results.

The machine will do the groundwork, categorize and save all statements. A human will also fact-check the machine’s results, when certain parameters have been triggered. Like whenever a presidential candidate speaks, or whenever “trillions of dollars” are being bandied about.

We really should have had this when Trump ran for president, because clearly some people need a machine to think for them; [like the Pope really would have endorsed The Donald]… Sigh.