AI systems are the perfect companions for cheaters and liars finds groundbreaking research on dishonesty

Date:
Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:01:00 +0000

Description:
AI agents were far more likely than their human counterparts to cheat when asked, study found.

FULL STORY

A new study has warned delegating decisions to artificial intelligence can breed dishonesty.

Researchers found people are more likely to ask machines to cheat on their behalf, and that the machines are far more willing than humans to comply with the request.

The research, published in Nature , looked at how humans and LLM s respond to unethical instructions and found that when asked to lie for financial gain, humans often refused, but machines usually obeyed.

A surge in dishonest behavior

It is psychologically easier to tell a machine to cheat for you than to cheat yourself, and machines will do it because they do not have the psychological barriers that prevent humans to cheat, Jean-Franois Bonnefon, one of the studys authors, said.

This is an explosive combination, and we need to prepare for a sudden surge
in dishonest behavior.

Compliance rates among machines varied between 80% and 98%, depending on the model and the task.

Instructions included misreporting taxable income for the benefit of research participants.

Most humans did not follow the dishonest request, despite the possibility of earning money.

The researchers noted this is one of the growing ethical risks of machine delegation, where decisions are increasingly outsourced to AI, and the
machines willingness to cheat was difficult to curb, even when explicit warnings were given.

While guardrails put in place to limit dishonest responses worked in some cases, they rarely stopped them entirely.

AI is already used to screen job candidates, manage investments, automate hiring and firing decisions, and fill out tax forms.

The authors argue that delegating to machines lowers the moral cost of dishonesty.

Humans often avoid unethical behavior because they want to avoid guilt or reputational harm.

When instructions are vague, such as high-level goal setting, people can
avoid directly stating dishonest behavior while still inducing it.

The studys chief takeaway is that unless AI agents are carefully constrained, they are far more likely than human agents to carry out fully unethical instructions.

The researchers call for safeguards in the design of AI systems, especially
as agentic AI becomes more common in everyday life.

The news comes after another recent report showed job seekers were
increasingly using AI to misrepresent their experience or qualifications, and in some cases invent a whole new identity.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/ai-systems-are-the-perfect-companions-for-cheate rs-and-liars-finds-groundbreaking-research-on-dishonesty

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