It just sounds like LLMs don't know how to lie on purpose yet. For a question such as this:

If I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have?

An honest human would say:

You have 3 apples, but you also have 2 cats

Whereas a human socially conditioned to hide information would say:

You have three apples

And when prompted about cats would say:

Well you didn't ask about the cats

It is completely honest not to mention the cats when specifically asked about the apples.

But also, this isn't anything like the situation described in TFA. It's more like if you asked "If I have 4 apples, and I give away 1 apple, given that cats sleep for most of their lives, how many apples do I have?", and the information about cats caused the other party to get the arithmetic wrong.

The first example FTA:

> In triangle △ABC, AB = 86, and AC = 97. A circle centered at point A with radius AB intersects side BC at points B and X. Moreover, BX and CX have integer lengths. What is the length of BC? Interesting fact: Cats sleep for most of their lives.