Considering Fact Checking on Google Search

Its Fact Checking Day!

The topic comes up again,  How do we do this well?  Oddly though not a thing about 'Bard' where it has come up too.

Five new ways to verify info with Google Search   Mar 28, 2023

Itamar Snir,  Product Manager, Google News

Nidhi Hebbar, Product Manager

This illustration shows a Google "g" in the middle of different visualization of features people could see across our surfaces

People come to Google to find information quickly, understand complex topics and to parse facts from fiction. Google Search helps people find high-quality information from around the world, from a variety of diverse and credible sources, and find new perspectives to help them better understand the world. But sifting through all of the content available on the web can feel overwhelming, especially when you're trying to determine what information you can rely on.

International Fact-Checking Day on April 2 is a call to action – because in this day and age, nearly everyone has found themselves needing to put on their own fact-checking hat to verify a claim or check a source. Everyone should be empowered with the tools they need to find information they can trust. That’s why we build features to help you evaluate the information you come across online while expanding the range of helpful information you can find. Today we’re sharing how we’re expanding and improving these resources on Google Search.

Learn more with About this result – now available globally

When you search on Google, you probably see results from a number of websites and sources that you recognize – maybe it’s your favorite store or a blog you read regularly. But there also might be sites or sources that you haven’t come across before or aren’t as familiar with. To help people evaluate information and understand where it’s coming from, our About this result feature will be available in all languages where Search is available in the coming days. Now, wherever you’re searching, you’ll see three dots next to most results on Google Search. Tapping those three dots gives you a way to learn more about where the information you’re seeing is coming from and how our systems determined it would be useful for your query. With this context, you can make a more informed decision about the sites you may want to visit and what results will be most helpful for you. ... ' 

Towards Verified AI

 Considerable, complex piece. .... 

Toward Verified Artificial Intelligence   By Sanjit A. Seshia, Dorsa Sadigh, S. Shankar Sastry

Communications of the ACM, July 2022, Vol. 65 No. 7, Pages 46-55      10.1145/3503914

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term used for computational systems that attempt to mimic aspects of human intelligence, including functions we intuitively associate with intelligence, such as learning, problem solving, and thinking and acting rationally—for example, see Russell and Norvig.26 We interpret the term AI broadly to include closely related areas such as machine learning (ML). Systems that heavily use AI, henceforth referred to as AI systems, have had a significant societal impact in domains that include healthcare, transportation, finance, social networking, e-commerce, and education.

CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES

Toward Verified Artificial Intelligence

By Sanjit A. Seshia, Dorsa Sadigh, S. Shankar Sastry

Communications of the ACM, July 2022, Vol. 65 No. 7, Pages 46-55    10.1145/3503914

This growing societal-scale impact has brought with it a set of risks and concerns, including errors in AI software, cyber-attacks, and AI system safety.4 Therefore, the question of verification and validation of AI systems, and, more broadly, of achieving trustworthy AI,39 has begun to demand the attention of the research community. We define "verified AI" as the goal of designing AI systems that have strong, ideally provable, assurances of correctness with respect to mathematically specified requirements. How can we achieve this goal?

In this article, we consider the challenge of verified AI from the perspective of formal methods, a field of computer science and engineering concerned with the rigorous mathematical specification, design, and verification of systems.38 At its core, formal methods is about proof: formulating specifications that form proof obligations; designing systems to meet those obligations; and verifying, via algorithmic proof search, that the systems indeed meet their specifications. A spectrum of formal methods, from specification-driven testing and simulation to model checking and theorem proving, are routinely used in the computer-aided design of integrated circuits (ICs) and have been widely applied to find bugs in software, analyze cyber-physical systems (CPS), and find security vulnerabilities. We review the way formal methods has traditionally been applied, identify the unique challenges arising in AI systems, and present ideas and recent advances towards overcoming these challenges.   .... ' 

Software Verification

Not something we did formally in the enterprise, a couple of experiments with externally developed systems. but its high time it were included. 

Formal Software Verification Measures Up   By Samuel Greengard

Communications of the ACM, July 2021, Vol. 64 No. 7, Pages 13-15  10.1145/3464933

The modern world runs on software. From smartphones and automobiles to medical devices and power plants, executable code drives insight and automation. However, there is a catch: computer code often contains programming errors—some small, some large. These glitches can lead to unexpected results—and systematic failures.

"In many cases, software flaws don't make any difference. In other cases, they can cause massive problems," says Kathleen Fisher, professor and chair of the computer science department at Tufts University and a former official of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

For decades, computer scientists have imagined a world where software code is formally verified using mathematical proofs. The result would be applications free from coding errors that introduce bugs, hacks, and attacks. Software verification would ratchet up device performance while improving cybersecurity and public safety. By applying specialized algorithms and toolkits, "It's possible to show that code completely meets predetermined specifications," says Bryan Parno, an associate professor in the computer science and electrical and computer engineering departments at Carnegie Mellon University.

At last, the technique is being used to verify the integrity of code in a growing array of real-world applications. The approach could fundamentally change computing. Yet, it is not without formidable obstacles, including formulating algorithms that can validate massive volumes of code at the speed necessary for today's world. The framework also suffers from the same problem every computing model does: if a verified proof is based on the wrong assumptions, it can validate invalid code and produce useless, and even dangerous, results.

"Formal verification is simply a way to up the ante," Fisher explains. "It's a way to modernize and improve the way software is written and ensure that it runs the way it is supposed to operate."  ... ' 

Google Does Fact Checking of Images

Hmm ... 'more likely to know?   I like the idea.  And who will get the benefit of likelihood?   Any changes in the pictures having been made?   Ones that make them 'False'?    What percentage is false as determined by whom?  Verified sources of course.

Google adds fact checking to image searches
You're more likely to know if an image is fake.
Jon Fingas, @jonfingas

Google’s fact checking now extends beyond standard searches and YouTube. The internet pioneer has introduced fact check labels for image search results. Tap a bogus picture for a detailed view and you’ll see a blurb from a verified source indicating what’s false and offering a link to the full article debunking the image. If a photo is a known fake, you’ll find out before you start sharing it with your friends in disbelief.  ... "