To understand whether humans can accept robots telling lies, scientists asked almost 500 participants to rate and justify different types of robot deception.
These were external state deceptions, which lie about the world beyond the robot, hidden state deceptions, where a robot's design hides its capabilities, and superficial state deceptions, where a robot's design overstates its capabilities.
While they considered the external state deception and the superficial state deception to be moderately deceptive, they disapproved more of superficial state deception, where a robot pretended it felt pain.
Participants tended to blame these unacceptable deceptions, especially hidden state deceptions, on robot developers or owners.
Experiments with in-person or simulated human-robot interactions are likely to provide greater insight into how humans actually perceive these robot deception behaviors."

Will humans accept robots that can lie? Scientists find it depends on the lie