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V-K Machine

The Voight-Kampff machine was invented in response to lobbying by politically motivated groups who expressed a concern that even the old Class 3 Replicants were sufficiently Human that there should be some test devised to ensure that a Human could never be retired by mistake. And so we get the V-K machine. It has been enhanced over the years to make it more robust - measuring capillary dilation of the blush response, involuntary dilation of the iris and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body.

The key to understanding its operation is the fact that replicants do not feel empathy. Later models do indeed have programmed emotional responses and it seems that the Class 6 reps are even capable of learning a few of their own emotions over time. However, they only have the basic feelings such as fear and anger. They have no empathy for other living things. The V-K measures the response times to a series of questions designed to provoke an emotional response. A set of 4 to 12 questions is usually sufficient to identify the difference in empathic response that exists between the elapsed time to process the programmed responses from a replicant as opposed to the automatic reactions of a Human.

The Voight-Kampff test is your legal safety net. A positive replicant identification by V-K is an automatic termination penalty for the subject. Retiring a subject without first getting a positive V-K may be subject to post-retirement questioning. However, since they were banned on Earth, if you have due cause to suspect the subject and they attack you, this will usually be seen as good cause for a lethal response.

However, there will be consequences if you kill a human by mistake.