Phil Houston knows how to spot a lie. A former career CIA officer who’s sometimes been called the human lie detector, he literally wrote the book on detecting deception. His techniques are used by U.S. intelligence agencies, businesses and billionaires.

Now he’s seeking to harness the power of artificial intelligence to supercharge his system — and market it to hedge funds listening to earnings calls, investigators interviewing suspects, employers considering potential new hires, or anyone else trying to discover duplicity.

There’s been a long history of hype around technologies that promised to turn lie detection from an art to a science, only to see the techniques fall far short. And there’s plenty of doubts about whether AI will be as transformational as some believe.