The lie detector becomes smartphone

There are the so called lie detectors, everyone of us would have wanted to have one of them at least one time during the life. There are situations on which we would like at all costs know the truth. The technology will let us be forcefully honest: the smartphones obtain the function of polygraph, the smartphone becomes a lie detector.

The lie detector

The polygraph or the lie detector is an instrument created by Leonarde Keeler. The instruments measures some anatomical physical characteristics like the blood pressure, the heart beat, the breath rythm and the skin strenght to the passage of electricity with the purpose to find out the hidden truths.

The polygraphes are the instruments through which the lie detector try to estimate the honesty of some statements. The honesty is a quite abstract concept and to many it results almost unlikely, especially through an instrument fully technological and scientifical like the polygraph.

Infact, it is known that the results obtained with those systems aren’t always universally valid. When we lie, our sweating, our temperature, the heart beat and so even the blood pressure increase.

The stress of a person under a lie detection can infact easily distort the datas: even for this reason often the datas are unreliable.

The smartphones though could avoid this shadow of mistrut towards the lie detector because their technology can make the results even more reliable. 

From the polygraph to the smartphone

The polygraph of the lie detector is modulated by the smartphone through many technologies:

• Facial recognition
• Analysis of the movements
• Identification of the user’s profile
• Vocal recognition

If we consider the vocal recognition, for example, through it the smartphone is able to analyse the words chosen by the user to answer to the question and the vibrations of his voice.

All of it, combined and integrated with the other listed technologies, is able to recognise the lies and the truths with really astonishing perecentages of success.

For the systems iOS and Android are already available apps that totally simulate the lie detection. For example for the system iOS there is The Lie Detector Truth Test and it is available on the App Store for the price of 0,99 euros.

The app is downloaded and once started the user is subject to the test and he will put the thumb on the iPhone’s display and meanwhile answer to the question that it will do. The app has a system that finds the stress’ level of who answers.

Once found this data, the app then will decode the mood of the user. Once ended the test, it could evaluate the truth of the answers of the examined user.

Those applications are some banal instruments, not sophisticated, but they more or less give the ideas of which instruments we will have integrated inside our smartphones.

The applications of the future lie detectors

The smartphones will so be a pocket lie detectors. This means that this function will be used by everyone really often. Between the valid usages of the pocket lie detector we could find it in the medical field.

Some patients psychologically unstable could for example abuse of antidepressant medicines and so don’t follow the sanitary therapy in the correct way. A doctor so could be sure about the therapy’s progresses of the patient by recognising if he is doing it or not.

Like always, the applications of a new technology aren’t always positive. The smartphone makes the lie detector affordable to all.

This will obviusly compromises our privacy: we could apply the lie detector to some video-chats, to the professional communications and so on.

The new technology will bring a confusion between what seems to us and what our interlocutors really think. This caos will inevitably create controversy, indifference and ambiguity even in the stronger personal relationships.

As well as all the technologies, even with this we should us it only when needed, without abuse of it (let’s think for example at its valid usage in legal situations).

This post is also available in: Italiano