"A small band of linguists, engineers and computer scientists, among others, are busy training computers to recognize hallmarks of what they call emotional speech - talk that reflects deception, anger, friendliness and even flirtation. ... Algorithms developed by Dr. Hirschberg and colleagues have been able to spot a liar 70 percent of the time in test situations, while people confronted with the same evidence had only 57 percent accuracy ... His lab has also found ways to use vocal cues to spot inebriation, though it hasn't yet had luck in making its computers detect humor - a hard task for the machines, he said."