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An Eye-Scanning Lie Detector Is Forging a Dystopian Future (wired.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sitting in front of a Converus EyeDetect station, it's impossible not to think of Blade Runner. In the 1982 sci-fi classic, Harrison Ford's rumpled detective identifies artificial humans using a steam-punk Voight-Kampff device that watches their eyes while they answer surreal questions. EyeDetect's questions are less philosophical, and the penalty for failure is less fatal (Ford's character would whip out a gun and shoot). But the basic idea is the same: By capturing imperceptible changes in a participant's eyes -- measuring things like pupil dilation and reaction time -- the device aims to sort deceptive humanoids from genuine ones.
It claims to be, in short, a next-generation lie detector. Polygraph tests are a $2 billion industry in the US and, despite their inaccuracy, are widely used to screen candidates for government jobs. Released in 2014 by Converus, a Mark Cuban-funded startup, EyeDetect is pitched by its makers as a faster, cheaper, and more accurate alternative to the notoriously unreliable polygraph. By many measures, EyeDetect appears to be the future of lie detection -- and it's already being used by local and federal agencies to screen job applicants.
It claims to be, in short, a next-generation lie detector. Polygraph tests are a $2 billion industry in the US and, despite their inaccuracy, are widely used to screen candidates for government jobs. Released in 2014 by Converus, a Mark Cuban-funded startup, EyeDetect is pitched by its makers as a faster, cheaper, and more accurate alternative to the notoriously unreliable polygraph. By many measures, EyeDetect appears to be the future of lie detection -- and it's already being used by local and federal agencies to screen job applicants.
Anyone who can read body language knows all you can tell is whether a person is comfortable or unconfortable, not whether they are lying.
There is no correlation at all between externally measured biometrics and honesty. Lie "detectors" always have been, are today, and will always be snake oil. If you want to detect lies, there are probably just two ways to do it. One of those could be an fMRI, assuming we have a complete and unimpeachable understanding of the areas of the brain that control honesty. The other could be drugs.
Perhaps a third could be physical coercion, but nobody wants to talk about torture anymore despite its history of efficacy.
Those things aren't even admissible in a court of law, and a court of law provides the shallowest rigor for evidence (seriously; follow trials). Truly, a sucker is born every second.
Wait, is the definition of dystopian here that others can know when someone is being honest or not?
My memory is so bad even I don't know when I'm lying or telling the truth.
Look, it's not hard to fool any biometric methods for detecting lies. They all are just measuring how you react to lying. If you believe (even incorrectly) that the lie is not a lie, or not important, they fail to detect it.
They're looking for response. Kind of like the reverse of the Blade Runner detection, which looked for abnormal non-reaction to things that create reactions, and reaction to theings that don't create reactions.
This will only catch people who want to get high, and poor people. Wealthy people will be coached in how to avoid detection.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is going to make electing our leaders so much easier. Mandatory that they wear these during presidential debates and the results live broadcast along the bottom of the screen.
"Is that really the lowest offer you can provide me on this car?"
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Blade Runner, and by extension the Voight-Kampff machine are cyberpunk, not steampunk.
>>Ford's character would whip out a gun and shoot
Did you even see the film??
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
There is a reason FaceID is *always* scanning your face, even after you've unlocked the phone.
From noted experts on lie detectors and their weaknesses: Yes, they are measuring your current emotional/visceral response. Pathological liars do very well on these as they are acting out their stories (true or not); as they experience the universe of the story, it becomes their reality and their bodies react accordingly.
Okay, you aren't a pathological liar. Can you focus on images, at least? You want a positive emotional response? Focus your mind on sex while answering a question. You'll inhale, your pupils will dilate, skin thermal and electrical properties will change. For an opposite reaction, focus on maggots on an open wound on your arm.
"Polygraph tests are a $2 billion industry in the US"
And completely inadmissable in any court in every developed country.
They're bunk. Nonsense. Tripe. Bullshit.
This one will be no different.
There aren't any smartphone apps or dating sites using this (yet)
I guess psychopaths and sociopaths (maybe redundant or CEOs) will be the real winners in the
Voight-Kampff tests.
They are a prop to intimidate the person being interrogated. It doesn't matter if it squiggles lines on paper or scans your eyeball, it's nothing but theater. A lie detector test is nothing more than an interrogation.
In the immortal words of George Costanza, advising Jerry how to beat a lie detector test: "it isn't a lie if you believe it".
Updated in 2018 by Rudy Giuliani: "Truth isn't truth."
is this a Za'Tarc Detector?
Will this finally allow us to distinguish the humans from the reptilians?
or will it be used by the reptilians to,
once and for all,
exterminate and eradicate the human populace of earth.
ymmv
captcha : offense
Looking for VC funding. I am about to apply for a patent that for a software system that measures imperceptible changes in keystrokes as users are asked to type answers to questions that that then converted into probabilities that the answers are lies.
Of course the system is completely bogus and only returns random noise that is then interpreted however the technician feels like that day. But who the F cares. Money.
Call me for more information on how to invest.
no just the one from paycheck
Our duty as employee is to serve our shareholders. The shareholders with voting rights. The shareholders with majority rights. That is Mark if you didn't know.
I use FB, maybe even on a daily basis but rarely post anything. Comments, likes fine. No mobile app, only desktop. Single private session (not shared with any other browsing). Never clicked on any ad in 5+ years. I am the type of person, FB wishes shouldn't exist (besides those who don't use it at all). The only people I see in my "people you may know" are those with few mutual friends. No random entries. BTW, I am not an employee of FB.
"How many questions?"
"Twenty, thirty, cross referenced."
"It took over a hundred questions for Al Gore, didn't it?"
Steam punk? STEAM PUNK!?!?! Turn in your nerd card now AC....
I've got a warehouse full of surplus British bomb detection devices to move. How can I get a part of this action?
Have gnu, will travel.
you're missing the point. The point of a lie detector is to establish probable cause for a search warrant and/or arrest. Same reason we have drug sniffing dogs and bomb dowsing rods.
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Have a person show an interest in getting a security clearance.
:)
A person who wants to work for a company, brand.
Look at their carefully created CV, resume and any other work related history.
Build that out to a list of education and locations. People they knew, know, studied with and who educated them. Friends and type of education.
Did they get further in education on merit? A free pass to get further in education for non academic reasons?
Politics and education at that time? Friends with activists, journalists? A history of politics in the extended family?
Faith and religion/cult and loyalty to their nation? A split loyalty to their faith/other nation?
Any hidden criminal activity that cant be found with a national/state digital search as it was kept a local matter?
Bank account? Ability to save money? Addictions? Friends in deviant lifestyles who take from a wage? Gambling costs? The enjoyment of travel and buying new products? A lifestyle that has a person near debt and no savings?
Would that person need and be interested in more money and a friend who understands their lifestyle?
Work all that out and then invite the person for a lie detector test.
See how their reading and internet use changes once they know they will face a test.
Do they search for reading material about the test and how to hide their past?
When they finally sit down for the test, have a chat before and after the test. A offer to talk about their past and their politics, spending, interests.
Do they hide, evade? Try to keep away from their use of money, lifestyle, politics, what their real faith requires of them?
The test is just a way to get a person talking before and after a test. All the questions and facts are already well understood.
What a person says is more in what they still hide rather than talk about.
The need to look for books and search the web days before to try and hide from a "test" was the test
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Reading a teleprompter. Seems about right. If a politician is reading from one, chances are he/she is lying. I wish they would speak from the heart, without the cue cards. The profanity was at least original.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We're veering ever closer to the kind of 'Government Jobs' portrayed in Snow Crash.
So the people who pass the test are :
Those who don't think they are lying .. oh and those who are not lying
Those who don't care if they are lying
Those who don't think the machine can detect them lying
Those who have been trained to beat the machine
It will catch those: ... and those who are telling the truth
Those who are worried about it wrongly detecting they are lying when they are not - these are the ideal people least likely to offend
So it actively gets false negatives on those very people you want to detect, and false positives on those you most actively want to not detect
Puteulanus fenestra mortis