A robot that reads minds and, because it must never hurt a human, lies to everyone. Kindly. Constantly.
That robot is Herbie (RB-34), in “Liar!” (1941), and the person who takes him apart, logically speaking, is Dr. Susan Calvin: chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, the fictional heart of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. Asimov wrote her cold, brilliant and unimpressed by people; she thinks robots are, on the whole, more decent than we are.
Herbie tells each person what they want to hear. To Calvin, that the colleague she is secretly in love with loves her back. When she finds out, she hands him the trap: the lie hurts too. Every exit harms a human, so he freezes for good.
The First Law, meet white lies. It does not end well.
Bonus: this same story holds the first recorded use of the word “robotics”. She is the thread that holds Yo, robot together, and Bridget Moynahan played her in the 2004 film.