Would you lie to me bot? Supporting decision-making processes with deceiving virtual agents

Although we learn as children that “you shall not lie”, it is widely accepted that deceptions and lies are necessary, yet unloved, parts of human communication. They are part of the clay that holds together the bricks of our society. In human-computer interaction, however, deceiving machines are seen as a taboo. In this paper, we want to challenge this perception by describing a virtual agent that improves decision-making processes by deceiving decision-makers in a controlled manner. A first survey we conducted shows that such a bot could indeed lead to a more informed decision-making process.