Polygraph+ will use new sensor technologies and AI to vet staff and hunt leakers. Experts say AI-enabled lie detection is "the worst of both worlds."
The US government wants to spend $30.3 million over the next five years on an improved form of lie detector, according to a Department of Defense budget request . The program, called Polygraph+ or Polygraph Next, will focus on scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence and machine learning and on a technique called "standoff sensing," which refers to the ability to take physiological readings without attaching a device to a subject's person
According to details of the budget document, which were first reported by Inside Defense , the project will "modernize federal polygraph and credibility assessment technologies" to improve their accuracy and reliability. But the project may be just the latest in a long line of failed attempts to use technology to detect lies. "It's a misguided effort to reduce the complex to something that is tangible," says Kyri Kotsoglou, a legal scholar at Northumbria University in the UK who studies the use of polygraphs in the justice system
