Hate crimes unfortunately happen all over the world, such as in America, and according to Google, it is difficult to track since apparently very little official data is collected on such incidents, which makes it harder for journalists to do their jobs on reporting on such issues since there isn’t much to go on.

However that’s something that Google wants to address using machine learning. The company has announced that Google News Lab will be working with ProPublica in launching a new machine learning tool that will help track hate crimes, and in turn will also help journalists find information that they can use for their reporting.

According to Google, “The new Index will help make this data easier to understand and visualize.  It is one of the first visualisations to use machine learning to generate its content using the Google Natural Language API, which analyses text and extracts information about people, places, and events. In this case, it helps reporters by digging out locations, names and other useful data from the 3,000-plus news reports.”

Journalists who are interested in checking out the Documenting Hate News Index will be pleased to learn that the feature is already live and they can take it for a spin if they wish. However as Google states, this is an ongoing thing and they’ll be keeping an eye on it over the next few months to see how it is being used and how to improve it for the future.

Filed in General. Read more about , and .

Discover more from Ubergizmo

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading