Google's long-time mission has been to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," according to Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai — and combating the rising tide of misinformation is "at the heart of everything we do."
Silicon Valley is at the center of a political firestorm over information shared on its platforms — and how that contributes to a fractured, polarized climate. In an exclusive interview with Yahoo Finance, Pichai said the world's largest search engine focuses primarily on ranking results that are "factual, accurate and safe."
That effort "is part of what we do, and everything we do in ranking information is designed for that," Pichai said, adding that the company is doing the same with YouTube, the online video platform owned by Google.
"Content responsibility has been a big part of our focus. And we are making tremendous strides, both by using human reviewers and A.I.," Pichai said — calling it "constant ongoing work. The amount of information in the world is more than ever before, and so we are constantly working to scale that up."
During the company's first-quarter earnings analyst call, Pichai highlighted some of the results from its investments in machine learning, which flags content that violates the company's policies. A new metric called the Violative View Rate (VVR) plunged during Q4 from the comparable quarter in 2017, Pichai noted on the call.