Are Jerk-O-Meters and Truth Detectors Dangerous?

By Steve Johnson
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

A few months ago I visited a friend in a hospital who was recovering from a motorcycle accident. He was 67 years old. He told me about the stuff he used to do 50 years ago as a kid growing up in Kansas.

One time while in high school, he wanted to take this particular girl to the dance. So he picked up the phone to give her a call. In those days, where he lived, no one dialed any numbers. Instead, the operator would immediately answer after picking up the receiver. He asked to be patched into Susan Chambers.

“Oh Dick”, the operator replied, “you know Susan doesn’t want to talk to you. Why don’t you talk to Dorothy Williams instead, she’s absolutely crazy for you!”

I had to laugh. Imagine that! 50 years ago, if a guy wanted to know which girl would answer “yes” to a date, the telephone could reveal the answer.

Obviously, finding a date is not that simple anymore. But then again, if the ends justify the means, then one could argue that the telephone is not as useful today as it was back then.

But there’s news.

The Associated Press reported today that a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is studying human speech in a variety of situations to identify patterns. The researchers, lead by Anmol Madan, a graduate of MIT, has developed the “Jerk-O-Meter”. It’s software that can analyze one’s voice to determine their level of interest in a conversation.

Madan and his team is also studying speech in a variety of other situations like speed-dating and salary negotiations, to identify patterns that can measure romantic interest and psychological stress.

Just today, I blogged about a product called the “Truth Detector“, which uses software algorithms to analyze someone’s speech to determine if they are lying or telling the truth. In fact, police departments are now using this technology.

So would it be a good thing or bad thing if this kind of technology were perfected and made available in high-tech gadgets?

If I were at a job interview, I’d be nervous knowing that the interviewer was recording my conversation to be played back through a sophisticated voice analysis machine. And how would that nervousness be interpreted? What if my wife and I were interviewing with a counselor to adopt a child? Would they rely on such technology too? Couldn’t you imagine a paranoid dad hiding in the closet with his laptop, listening into a mic’d conversation between his daughter and her boyfriend, and then jumping out yelling, “he’s a liar! he’s a liar!”

Maybe those examples are far-fetched, but having this kind of information immediately available to you is distracting. No one is ever perfect at conversation.

But doesn’t this technology also set up an oxymoron? I mean if such a device could detect your level of attention, then obviously a person monitoring such a device is not paying attention himself. Imagine two people engaged in a business-to-business negotiation, each monitoring each other, and accusing the other of not paying attention!

Even more, when people become reliant on having this information presented to them, it’ll turn them into poor listeners. Instead of hearing each other’s vocal inflections and tone changes, they’ll only hear the words themselves, and use a gauge to determine emotion.

But then again, it might be fun to pull up to a fast-food drive-through, place an order, and hear the attendant say, “C’mon, I know you don’t want to eat that.”