Are we being honest when we are confronted with tough questions to answer? Maybe we are, but maybe we aren't and we don't even know it.
We can hide from reality and from ourselves. When we talk to others and tell others things, they just have to take our word for it or not if they can't verify it themselves in some other way.
Lie detectors are known to be unreliable which is why they are not accepted in courts as evidence. But what if there was something that could almost "read the mind" of an individual? Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technology that reads what happens in our brains as activity that corresponds in some way to what happens in our minds. Brain activity is measured by tracking changes in blood flow. This non-invasive and safe method of learning about our brain has allowed us to understand more about our speech, movement, memory and other aspects of the brain.
The use of fMRI's has become more complex with the merging of machine learning algorithms. Rather than feeding preprogrammed data into a computer model of a subjects brain activity, a new computer algorithm has been developed that can create its own model to decode brain activity and can improve with practice by having enough data.
More recent research using fMRI's has led to the study of answers people give to questions, and whether they are truthful or contain lies. A computer model is given the answers to a series of questions, marked as either true or false answers, that are compared to someone's brain signature when they answer the same questions. The computer model can then form a "brain signature of lying" to distinguish between truthful or lying responses.
The model of brain activity that is generated is accurate at around 90% of the time, being able to distinguish and classify an answer as either a lie or a truth 9//10 times. A polygraph is accurate up to about 70%. Companies have now licensed this fMRI lie detection algorithm and are looking to get it accepted as evidence in court.
Even with 90% accuracy, it's still worrisome and has so far not been accepted by judges that have ruled the technology is not ready for a legal setting. With a 10% chance of sending an innocent person to jail, I would tend to agree with them.
Researchers point out that even if it can be made more accurate, the fMRI will never be error proof. One definite issue is a false memories in remembering things that didn't happen where we don't even know we lied to ourselves in the past and accepted it as a truth. Beliefs are not a de facto truth of reality. The brain scans in activity will reflect the anything someone believes to be true, even if they aren't intentionally lying. Looking at the brain scan as hard evidence that someone was lying isn't very accurate in this case.
If this ever does pass, think of the implications for invasion of privacy and even potentially thought crime or pre-crime applications that mirror 1984 by George Orwell or Minority Report by Philip K Dick.
Think of an advanced version of magnetic resonance imaging for you could just walk by airport scanner and it would be the same as stepping into an interrogation room. It's possible that they would eventually develop algorithms that detect aberrant behavior that doesn't only indicate violence, but would simply indicate thoughts that are not conducive to social conformity.
The current computer modeling requires to get to know you and the characteristics of your brain activity before it can make any accurate deductions. This requires people to be scanned for hours or over several sessions. In its current form, this can't be done without your knowledge or against your will. If you want to prevent an accurate scan you just move in the scanner.
Our legal system has ethical guidelines for researchers who want to use magnetic resonance imaging to conduct experiments, but there are no such legal requirements for commercial applications.
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