Lie detectors, created specifically for lovers, appeared on the market — the Love-detector. The new device will reliably determine what feelings the object of adoration has for you.
The pursuit of time and the desire to use it rationally have already formed a certain sector of the consumer market. The desire of a modern person to save a minute has created a profitable business: pocket PCs allow you to program or type texts while standing in a crush in a subway car, audio courses on CD or cassettes — learn a language in traffic jams …
Now love has also been rationalized. Love-detectors, which appeared on the market this year, allow you to shorten the courtship process — in case nothing shines for the lover. The new product defines love by analyzing a person’s emotions by voice. As inventor Albert de Vries of the Israeli firm Nemesysco says, the idea is this: “Let’s say you meet a new employee at work who you like. You call her to see if she feels anything for you or if you are just wasting your time if you invite a woman to dinner.
A love detector that has canceled romance is perhaps cheaper than dinner in a good restaurant. Its price, depending on the configuration (with or without a cable), ranges from $49,99 to $89. Pocket PC option — $20.
Love-detector is not like ordinary lie detectors. This is not a buzzing machine with wires that gives out graphs of changes in pulse and blood pressure, but a computer program. It can be installed on any modern computer. Plus, you need a special cable connecting the PC to the phone (Nemesysco also produces cables) and a microphone. During a call, the interlocutor’s voice is passed through the computer, the Love-detector program reads it, selects and analyzes it using 129 parameters. All changes in emotions are recorded on a graph on a computer screen. After the conversation is over, the program displays the result of the analysis: a virtual camomile appears on the display, apparently as a tribute to the memory of naive times. The plucked version does not bode well, but if all the petals are in place, complete happiness is guaranteed. A verdict is written under the virtual camomile (the score is given in points on a scale from -10 to +50). There can be seven options in total: “crazy love”, for example, means 45 points and above.
However, even its inventor de Vries does not recommend completely trusting your fate to a computer program: “After all, not everything is so simple. Let’s say you called at an odd time. They pulled out, say, a person from under the shower, or woke up, or simply the connection was bad. All this can distort the result.
And in general, the method of determining the truth by voice, as, indeed, by other parameters, is debatable. The new test system «for love» is a simplified version of voice lie detectors, Software SENSE, invented a couple of years ago by the same Nemesysco. Prior to this, says the inventor de Vries, lie detectors existed in the form of separate devices and recorded only changes in pulse and blood pressure, and sometimes also sweating.
Computer programs for determining the “truth to the word” appeared as a means of combating terrorism, they were to be used in the security systems of airports, train stations, supermarkets … However, now some companies have begun to use voice lie detectors when hiring employees, insurance companies using the program “ bringing to clean water” communicate with clients and additionally check whether the claims of those for damages are justified …
There is no exact data on what the error is when using SENSE technology. Nemesysco claims that in 90 percent of cases, the voice detector gives an accurate result. Research by Mitchell Summers of the University of Washington, published in the German weekly Zeit, shows a mistake 63 percent of the time, just as well as flipping a coin. But be that as it may, voice lie detectors are already officially used in Israel, the US and the UK. In many other countries, such as Germany, they are banned because they violate the freedom of the individual.