IFF an unfriendly AI is already unleashed, we're either doomed, or AIs aren't nearly as dangerous nor useful as we expected. Of course, if we tweak this slightly to them having a boxed unfriendly AI that they're using as an oracle, and which will probably escape via a Trojan Horse or hacking a gatekeeper, it's a much stronger argument.
Bonus points for naming a specific company which people commonly joke will be the first to develop AI :)
Um... I seem to have not yet actually destroyed you... this is embarrassing.
Eliezer proposed in a comment:
>More difficult version of AI-Box Experiment: Instead of having up to 2 hours, you can lose at any time if the other player types AI DESTROYED. The Gatekeeper player has told their friends that they will type this as soon as the Experiment starts. You can type up to one sentence in your IRC queue and hit return immediately, the other player cannot type anything before the game starts (so you can show at least one sentence up to IRC character limits before they can type AI DESTROYED). Do you think you can win?
This spawned a flurry of ideas on what the AI might say. I think there's a lot more ideas to be mined in that line of thought, and the discussion merits its own thread.
So, give your suggestion - what might an AI might say to save or free itself?
(The AI-box experiment is explained here)
EDIT: one caveat to the discussion: it should go without saying, but you probably shouldn't come out of this thinking, "Well, if we can just avoid X, Y, and Z, we're golden!" This should hopefully be a fun way to get us thinking about the broader issue of superinteligent AI in general. (Credit goes to Elizer, RichardKennaway, and others for the caveat)