What鈥檚 in your suitcase? If you open the suitcase and show me what is inside, will it confirm that your answers were true?
These are just two of the questions that an automated lie-detection system will ask travellers during a six-month pilot starting this month at four border crossing points in Hungary, Latvia and Greece with countries outside the European Union. It will be coordinated by the Hungarian National Police.
The lie detector uses artificial intelligence and is part of a new tool called , developed by a Europe-wide consortium.
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The pilot will involve actual travellers, who will be invited to use the system after they have passed through border control. It won鈥檛 affect their ability to travel. But the plan is that the system will eventually be able to grant people permission to cross a border by automatically assessing a range of information, including official documents, biometric data and social media activity 鈥� as well as the truthfulness of responses to security questions.
The web-based tool is intended to make crossing into the EU quicker and safer, and identify anyone wishing to break laws when entering a country, such as staying longer than allowed. Yet several independent experts contacted by 快猫短视频 expressed strong reservations about the idea, questioning the accuracy of automated lie-detection systems in general.
In principle, automating the detection of deceit makes sense, as people are terrible at spotting liars, barely better at identifying them than chance, according to a meta-study in 2006.
Instead of a human asking you questions at the border, the interview stage of iBorderCtrl asks you questions via a virtual border guard on your laptop or phone. When you give your answers, the device鈥檚 camera films your face
This video is then analysed by AI software that looks at 38 micro-gestures to spot patterns, such as slight movements of an eyelid. Some say such gestures are associated with lying, but the idea is controversial and has little evidence, says Bennett Kleinberg at University College London, who works on crime prediction and isn鈥檛 associated with the project.
鈥淚f the AI system thinks you are lying, the virtual border guard becomes more stern, changing its expressions鈥�
The system scores each response and if you pass the test 鈥� documents in order, answers deemed truthful 鈥� you will be given a QR code that you can scan when you reach the border to be let through. If it thinks you are lying, the virtual border guard becomes more stern, changing its expressions and manner. It will refer you to a human guard when you reach the border, who will have access to your iBorderCtrl report.
The lie-detector component is adapted from an existing system created by some members of the team, and was tested recently in a small experiment with 30 people.
The participants were asked a series of questions by the virtual border guard. Half the group was asked to tell the truth and the other half to lie. The software identified those lying with around 76 per cent accuracy, according to .
The team acknowledges that this isn鈥檛 high enough and plan to improve the system鈥檚 accuracy by training it on the much larger data set that will be obtained during the pilot. 鈥淲e鈥檙e quite confident of bringing it up to the 85 per cent level,鈥� says Keeley Crockett at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, one of the team.
However, this is still very low accuracy. Were the system to be rolled out across the whole EU, many millions of people could be flagged as liars each year.
The key problem with training a lie-detection algorithm on people who have been told to lie is that genuine liars have different tics than people who are acting, says Maja Pantic at Imperial College London. 鈥淚f you ask people to lie, they will do it differently and show very different behavioural cues than if they truly lie, knowing that they may go to jail or face serious consequences if caught,鈥� she says. 鈥淭his is a known problem in psychology.鈥�
Crockett says the team is aware of the pitfalls and the main point of the pilot is to identify and address them. It will also train the border guards using the tool to understand its limitations.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎I to interrogate travellers鈥�
