This was interesting to read, but the video didn't seem merciful at all. Curious, maybe, but the woman was laughing and not taking it seriously at all. The writer makes it sound as thought there is some internal struggle happening which really doesn't appear to take place. On the other hand, that cat robot is awesome!
That woman was not taking the experiment seriously at all, but I wonder how much of that was affected by things like: The appearance of the robot (that is not a cat, I don't care what you say.), the environment, the language the robot was speaking, and how she thought the robot was "thinking". That is, would test subjects be more "merciful" to a robot if they were told "This robot is dynamically deciding what to say based on your actions" as opposed to "We've given this robot a set group of pre-programmed responses which will play in order as you shut it down."