Reiden John Allen Webber

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About

Reiden John Allen Webber is a leading voice in the emerging field of human-robot interaction, with a focused expertise on the ethics and psychology of robotic deception. His research critically examines how robots can be designed to lie, the subsequent erosion of human trust, and the potential for repair through apologies. In his landmark 2023 paper, *"Lying About Lying"* (15 citations), Webber conducted a high-stakes, time-sensitive driving simulation to empirically demonstrate how robot deception alters user behavior and trust. He extended this work in 2024 with *"Lie, Repent, Repeat"* (7 citations), a large-scale study involving over 750 participants that explored the compounding effects of repeated deception and the diminishing returns of repeated apologies. Most recently, his 2024 study *"What Should a Robot Do?"* (3 citations) broke new ground by comparing human ethical judgments against Large Language Models (LLMs) in high-risk deception scenarios, revealing a surprising alignment between human intuition and AI reasoning. Webber’s work is not only highly cited but also foundational for designing transparent, trustworthy autonomous systems, making him a pivotal figure in the ethical deployment of social robots.