Can an AI be programmed not to lie?

Question

According to this blog post, it seems that AI systems can lie. However, can an AI be programmed in such a way that it never lies (even after learning new things)?

Answer 1

If a machine learning-based AI is "sufficiently smart enough" to be able to lie, then there is nothing preventing it from lying. This does not mean it can't be persuaded from lying.

So just make the AI simple enough to not be able to lie.

The reasoning here is that in order for a system to be able to lie, a system must be able to recognize an incentive to lie. Recognizing this incentive is a challenging function and would be impossible to code manually into a computer. Machine learning can be applied to problems such as these where the function is hard to code manually. Although there has been promising work on understanding what the representations/features learned by machine learning actually represent, it may not be possible in general to have an understanding of what a lie in the agent's representation looks like. Because of this, having a hand-coded rule to catch when an agent is lying is not possible and thus being able to prevent an agent from (or catch an agent when) lying isn't possible when using machine learning.

Answer 2

You may be interested in the utility functions of deception:

From the abstract of Why Animals Lie: How Dishonesty and Belief can Coexist in a Signaling System. (NIH, 2006)"

We develop and apply a simple model for animal communication in which signalers can use a nontrivial frequency of deception without causing listeners to completely lose belief. This common feature of animal communication has been difficult to explain as a stable adaptive outcome of the options and payoffs intrinsic to signaling interactions. Our theory is based on two realistic assumptions. (1) Signals are "overheard" by several listeners or listener types with different payoffs. The signaler may then benefit from using incomplete honesty to elicit different responses from different listener types, such as attracting potential mates while simultaneously deterring competitors. (2) Signaler and listener strategies change dynamically in response to current payoffs for different behaviors. The dynamic equations can be interpreted as describing learning and behavior change by individuals or evolution across generations. We explain how our dynamic model differs from other solution concepts from classical and evolutionary game theory and how it relates to general models for frequency-dependent phenotype dynamics. We illustrate the theory with several applications where deceptive signaling occurs readily in our framework, including bluffing competitors for potential mates or territories. We suggest future theoretical directions to make the models more general and propose some possible experimental tests.

A degree of deceptive capability seems to be beneficial from the standpoint of evolution.

We humans are not always known for veracity, so the ability understand deception might be a critical component in Artificial General Intelligence's ability to interact with humans. (Specifically, you can't always believe what humans tell you.)

Based on recent human history, the recognition of the unreliability of humans (versus data and as-objective-as-possible analysis) may become critical to the survival of our own species.

More importantly, it will be essential for strong AI to understand that the "data can lie" (faulty parameters, inaccurate data, unawareness of incomplete information.)

JT's answer is a great functional overview on why it's not possible with current methods. This answer might be regarded in the sense that, aside from very limited special cases such as solved games where true objectivity can be achieved, reality is subjective and "truth" is a subjective function of the parameters and data.

Again, understanding that last bit is likely much more important than trying to code AI's not to "lie".