Can you imagine a world where no one lies?
With the rapid progress of AI and machine learning, it seems like we are getting close to the day when it will be almost impossible to lie without been exposed.
Sounds like heaven? Think again - researches had shown that lies are an inherit part of human culture, so it’s not really clear how and if we can live without them.
The definition of a lie
According to Oxford English Dictionary (OED 1989) the definition of a lie is “to make a false statement with the intention to deceive”. As surprising as it might sound, everybody lies all the time. Psychologists have documented children lying as early as age 2. Some experts even consider lying adevelopmental milestone, like crawling and walking, because it requires sophisticated planning, attention and the ability to see a situation from someone else’s perspective to effectively manipulate them.
There are many arguments against lying, but the most fundamental one is that while our society is built on mutual trust, when one lies, they undermine trust in society. This is the reason for why lying was always considered to be an unwanted social phenomenon.
In the Bible, the ninth of the Ten Commandments is “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" which is widely understood as perjury prohibition. Philosophers like Aristotle, St. Augustine and Immanuel Kant went one step forward and argued that there are no circumstances in which one is ethically permitted lie. And of course, stories like Pinocchio have told us that if we lie, something bad will happen to us. Nevertheless, lying never went away.
Polygraph
Since the dawn of history, people have searched for methods that can help indicate a lie. While in ancient times people used all sorts of witchcraft or other pseudo-scientific methods, over the years lie detection had become an actual scientific domain.
A polygraph is a device that measures several physiological indicators of a person in order to determine whether they are lying. The word Polygraph comes from Greek: "poly" meaning "many", and the word "graph" meaning "writings". The world’s first polygraph was introduced in 1921 by John Augustus Larson, a medical student and a police officer from Berkeley, California. Since then it has been improved dramatically.
The way a polygraph works is by asking the subject to answer a series of questions while recording his physiological activity, under the assumption that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers. Among the physiological indicators that are being recorded are blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity. There is however, no single specific physiological reaction associated with lying, making it difficult to identify factors that separate liars from truth tellers.
Polygraph reliability is controversial. While studies indicate accuracy ranging from 70% at worst to 90% and even 95% at best, most study conducted by polygraph institutes and many unbiased institutes like the National Research Council have found no evidence of actual effectiveness of these tests. Moreover, there are several famous cases of spies, including Marcus Klingberg and Aldrich Ames, who underwent polygraph tests without being detected despite lying.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the polygraph has had a tremendous impact on our society, mainly as a precedent for an actual, even if not very accurate, lie detector.
AI powered lie detector
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) lie at the core of several interesting technological developments of our current time. The idea underlying these technologies is that machines can process information in such a way as to allow them to perform tasks that are impossible for human beings. When it comes to lie detecting, AI and ML turn out to be a perfect fit.
iBorderCtrl is an European airport security system based on an artificial intelligence powered lie detector that is about to be tested this month at airports in Hungary, Latvia and Greece. Passengers will be asked a series of travel-related questions by a virtual border guard avatar, and artificial intelligence will monitor changes in their eyes, voice, gestures and posture to assess whether they are lying.
“The avatar will become ‘more skeptical’ and change its tone of voice if it believes a person has lied, before referring suspect passengers to a human guard and allowing those believed to be honest to pass through”, said Keeley Crockett of Manchester Metropolitan University in England, who is involved in the project.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security funded a similar project known as the Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time, or AVATAR.
It seems like AI powered lie detector technology is about to go through a similar path as the biometric technology – one day it seems like science fiction, and the next it’s an integral part of our life.
The next step
Augmented reality (AR) is another revolutionary technology that is about to penetrate our lives. Several huge corporates are about to launch their version of smart glasses that will allow us to combine what we see in real life with a layer of digital data on top of it.
When it comes to smart glasses, a lie detecting app could be an obvious development. After all - if the lie-detecting technology exist, how hard could it be to implement it in smart glasses that have a camera and a microphone? Whenever our smart glasses will identify that someone is lying to us, they could silently notify us by showing us a relevant pop-up or some sort of an indicator. This could mean that every one of us could always know if he is being lied to.
A world of truth
How dramatic would it be if one day we won't be able to lie without being exposed? Very! Apparently, lying is much more an inherent thing then one would think. According to Dan Ariely, a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, the average person lies several times a day without even being aware of it.
In a completely honest world, our essence of communication could change. From simple questions like “how do I look?” or “do you like what I’ve done with my hair?” to more important and sensitive issues – we will all have to reconsider each of our answers, as ones that won’t be 100% true could mark us as liars.
Many aspects of our lives could change dramatically – mostly for the better. Doing business, for example, is going to be much safer and clearer as both sides will have to tell the truth. On the other hand, social events like family dinners could become a disaster, as in some cases to much honesty doesn’t help…
But the elimination of lies could have a much greater impact on politics. According to John Mearsheimer, an American political scientist and international relations scholar, without lies democracies can’t exist. In his book Why Leaders Lie Mearsheimer states that leaders in western democratic countries tend to lie to their own citizens more often than leaders in a totalitarian regime because in the democratic system, where every action requires the rapid mobilization of public opinion, leaders are forced to use manipulations and lies.
The next generation of lies
If history has told us something, it is that men learn to adapt and that necessity is the mother of invention. If lying is such an inherent part of our lives, there is a good chance that in the future there will be all sorts of inventions and development that will allow people to overcome lie detectors – from special drugs to even surgeries or implants. Yet the impact of the AI lie detectors will still be tremendous, as the vast majority of people will simply have to adapt to being honest.
In conclusion
As technology changes every aspect of our life, the most interesting one is the way it influences our communication. In the future, we will have to adapt to a whole new reality in which every time we tell a lie we may be exposed. There is no doubt that this going to be very challenging, but with all the challenges that we are going to face in the future it’s good to know that we can at least tell the difference between truth and falsehood.