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Technology

Robot discovers that lying about a betrayal helps to rebuild trust

By Donna Lu

29 March 2019

robot

Should you trust a robot?

Sebo/Krishnamurthi/Scassellati

Betraying someone and lying about it is pretty low – especially if you’re a robot. An experiment on interactions between humans and robots reveals just how easy it is for robots to regain trust after a misdeed by fibbing.

The devious robot in question is NAO, a 58-centimetre-high humanoid that moves and interacts with people. Sarah Sebo at Yale University and her colleagues arranged for 82 people to compete for points against NAO in an asteroid-shooting computer game.

In some rounds, a special asteroid blaster was awarded to either the human or NAO.…

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