philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Pentagon wants $30 million to build an AI-powered lie detector

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.” ...

Current lie detection technology has barely changed since the polygraph was invented in the 1920s. Examiners rely on blood pressure, pulse, breathing, and sweat measurements to determine if someone is lying. They make judgments about the veracity of respondents’ replies on the basis of differences in their physiological response to baseline questions like “Is the sky blue?” and target questions like “Have you ever committed a crime?”

The federal government conducts tens of thousands of the tests each year while screening employees, but the reliability of this technology has been repeatedly challenged—and its results are rarely admissible in court. ...

“If you know how it works, you can beat it,” says Sophie van der Zee, an associate professor who studies deception at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She says the machine’s biggest effect is deterrence—often, subjects confess before it even begins. “But that only works if people think a polygraph works,” she points out. ...

Three things are happening under the surface that lie detection tries to home in on, van der Zee says: physiological stress, cognitive load, and the conscious efforts people make to conceal the fact that they’re lying. Current polygraph technology tackles only one. ...

Kotsoglou says combining AI and the polygraph is “the worst of both worlds” because it adds uncertainty on top of invalidity. Even if AI or machine learning can spot previously unseen patterns in physiological data, it won’t be able to reliably link them to lying because there is no real ground truth. ...

“It seems very much a response to the concern of the current administration to leaks and perceived lack of loyalty,” says Oswald. “[Lie detection is] being used as a threat, to intimidate and force people to confess to things, as opposed to anything that's actually getting valid information.”

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/25/1145144/pentagon-ai-lie-detector