Moreover, your response really needs to be contingent on your knowledge of the capacity of the AI, which people don't seem to have discussed much.

Your comment makes me wonder: if we assume the AI is powerful enough to run millions of person simulations, maybe the AI is already able to escape the box, without our willing assistance. Perhaps this violates the intended assumptions of the post, but can we be absolutely sure that we closed off all other means of escape for an incredibly capable AI? I think that the ability to escape without our assistance and the ability to create millions of person simulations may be correlated.

And if the AI could escape on its own, is it still possible that it would bother us with threats? Perhaps the threat itself reduces the likelihood that the AI is powerful enough to escape on its own, which reduces the likelihood that it is powerful enough to carry out its threat.