An AI-Based Lie Detector for Call Center Conversations:
Researchers in Germany have used machine learning to create an audio analysis system intended primarily to act as an AI-based lie detector for customers in audio communications with call center and support staff.
The system uses a specially-created dataset of audio recordings by 40 students and teachers during debates on contentious subjects, including the morality of the death penalty and tuition fees. The model was trained on an architecture that uses Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and achieved a reported accuracy rate of 98%.
Though the stated intent of the work cites customer communications, the researchers concede that it effectively operates as a general purpose lie-detector:
[...] In the absence of a suitable publicly available dataset in the German language, the researchers – from Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU) – created their own source material. Fliers were posted at the university and at local schools, with 40 volunteers selected with a minimum age of 16. Volunteers were paid with a 10 euro Amazon voucher.
The sessions were conducted on a debate club model designed to polarize opinion and arouse strong responses around incendiary topics, effectively modeling the stress that can occur in problematic customer conversations on the phone.
Journal Reference:
Fabian Thaler, Stefan Faußer, Heiko Gewald. Put your money where your mouth is: Using AI voice analysis to detect whether spoken arguments reflect the speaker's true convictions, (DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.11175)[pdf]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @07:58PM (3 children)
So can the lie detectors detect that the makers of the lie detectors are not telling the truth when they claim that these things are accurate?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:11PM
A video [frontiersin.org] lie detector could feasibly work. Audio only hasn't a chance, there's so many more possible reasons for nervousness, stress and voice modulation than lying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 29 2021, @12:26AM (1 child)
What I want to know: can this in any way be used on people's posts here on SN?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 29 2021, @01:38PM
I am a robot. (Where am I supposed to put my tick?)
--
You have the right to remain stupid!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:03PM (1 child)
So, it's not a news network at all?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:23PM
CNN = Commercial News Network
ABC = Always broadcasting commercials
NBC = Nothing but commercials
CBS = Commercial Broadcasting Station
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:11PM (6 children)
so i suppose people that rely on lying to make money now need a monthy prescription to the latest trained dataset so they can practice fooling it?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday July 28 2021, @09:31PM (5 children)
I suggest that people who rely on lying to make money provide no actual benefit to society.
Are there any counter examples where lying to make money provides actual benefit to society?
The first example someone might suggest is Sales. Or advertising. If you have to lie to sell something, it's not benefiting anyone but the seller. But buyer was sold something under false pretenses. Sales may strive to tell the truth, but the incentive to lie is inherent and so sales (and advertising) always push the envelope of what is truthy.
Putting sales, marketing and advertising into its own deceptive category; are there any examples of lying to make money is a benefit to society? A benefit to anyone but the liar, or who they are telling their lie on behalf of.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 28 2021, @09:46PM (4 children)
Lying to make money is called fraud.
Except when it's called religion.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 28 2021, @10:29PM
There are plenty of frauds in religion.
Here's one: https://www.spaghettimonster.org/ [spaghettimonster.org]
(Though, that one is more satire, than anything.)
Maybe not a list of frauds, but some were convicted of fraud:
https://listverse.com/2015/01/16/10-evangelist-preachers-who-fell-from-grace/ [listverse.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 29 2021, @02:09AM
Which one of these do lawyers practice?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 29 2021, @03:14AM
In theory, yes. But it turns out that the liars lie further by re-defining their lies as "exaggeration" or "puffery".
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 29 2021, @01:56PM
I did consider whether to bring up so called faith healers and health-and-wealth preachers. But decided not to add that distraction.
The reason is because of the word religion. The charlatans I just mentioned fall under that umbrella. But then so do others who preach forgiveness and faith, along with their followers and people who give to them. Do I want to drag them into that as well -- regardless of whether one believes it or not.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:19PM (2 children)
These will likely only work in one direction, so you won't know when the company told the call center drone to lie to you.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by weilawei on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:32PM
(Score: 3, Troll) by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 28 2021, @10:04PM
That's already a solved problem. Is the call center person talking? Then they're lying.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lentilla on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:45PM (4 children)
I am unconvinced that detecting lying is at all useful in dealing with call centres from a customer perspective. Insurance companies; of course; will find it very helpful as yet another tool to stamp "denied" on claims. Companies (at least in my experience) don't lie. They do; however; prevaricate, obfuscate, don't know and; in general; don't care.
To be successful in dealing with large companies, you need the following skills:
Lying is not the problem. Getting to talk with someone who cares enough to not quickly pass the buck, and who knows enough about company systems to obtain a resolution is the problem. Whenever you hit "computer says no", you simply thank the staff member profusely, hang up and hit "redial". Rinse and repeat until you get a result.
Sometimes I am not greatly impressed by humanity.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 28 2021, @09:27PM
And then when you get a final "no", you take it beyond the next level [youtu.be]. You may need to hire a professional performer, however.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 29 2021, @03:38AM (2 children)
Thank you <BZZT!> for calling BadCo. Due to unusually high call volume <BZZT!> all of our agents are busy. Your call is vary important to us <BZZT!>, please hold just a moment <BZZT!> for the next available operator.....
Thank you <BZZT!> for calling BadCo, my name is Bob <BZZT!>, how can I help you <BZZT!> today?
Item 1.5, find a way to talk to one of the actual technical people that they keep away from the public. For example, an ISP's line crew (offering cold water on a hot day can go a long way). In the old days, phreakers were often successful when talking to an inbound operator. A bit of war dialing (perhaps with some social engineering) may help. Shoulder surfing the number the tech calls for resolution may help in the future.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 30 2021, @06:29PM (1 child)
When dealing with an ISP, I've found giving them technical data from my Linux system about what their service is doing often gets me to a technically knowledgeable agent.
Not always, though.
Some ISP's just tell me they don't support Linux. If so, time to change ISP's.
And when I cancel the service, I always tell them why.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 30 2021, @06:37PM
Unfortunately, far too many people find that there is only one more or less viable ISP in their area. Also, you have to get past the people who are empowered only to read questions out of the flipbook and then flip to the page that most closely corresponds to your answer (based on keywords since it's all gobbledygook to them anyway). Once past those people, yes actual useful technical data may be helpful.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 28 2021, @08:52PM (2 children)
Now available -- for a $5/month subscription fee, you can attach this inline to your HDMI audio stream or plug it into your headphone jack, and get an idea who and when on [news channel] or [government proceedings channel] is saying something suspect. What a bargain!
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 28 2021, @10:07PM
Are they saying something? Then they're probably lying.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday July 29 2021, @03:40AM
Or these days just write LIAR on a sheet of paper and tape it under your screen.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Wednesday July 28 2021, @09:07PM (1 child)
On 40 volunteer students?
I doubt it will tell you anything at all.
In my very considerable experience, signs of lying are extremely culturally specific, and somewhat
dependent on the speaker actually having a meaningful concept of the truth.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @09:13PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 28 2021, @09:26PM
I see a great future for this technology in law enforcement as a replacement for the polygraph in forcing or fabricating false confessions.
(Score: 5, Funny) by darkfeline on Thursday July 29 2021, @01:20AM
I see this as an absolute win. Now I can be polite while still communicating my unbridled rage.
C: "How are you today sir?"
Me: "I'm great, just wanted to ask about X"
Lie detector: "Fuck you. Your shit company should burn in hell."
C: "Okay, can you wait on the line while I transfer you?"
Me: "Yeah, sure"
Lie detector: "Do I have a fucking choice you imbecile? It better not take half an hour or I'm going to go shoot up the call center."
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 29 2021, @08:17PM
Assume anyone cold-calling you is lying. The entire country's industry seems to be built on lies. You can't even get away from it in hospitals of all places.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 30 2021, @06:35PM
The effective way to detect lies is to ask probing questions about what you suspect to be a lie. And not in an obvious way. Use a style that's chit-chatty and correlate the potential lies with what you already know, and with the other potential lies. It the potential liar doesn't have details, or keeps diverting the conversation, ... Well, not all that automatable.
Not clear how AI helps with this. Not clear at all how the AI trainers know what is a lie and what isn't.
And did they actually hire in a bunch of students and tell them to lie to the computer? Sounds like a very different scenario from people who have to lie and fear getting caught.