Drugs routinely fail in human trials, and one would guess that the drug companies did not start the human trials knowing that the drug killed all the mice or something. So we know that even if the animal trials go perfectly, it's quite likely they'll be unsafe in humans.
(What's that quip again? "We can cure anything in mice except the cures not working on humans"? Sure I saw something like that somewhere.)
A while back I read a Slate article claiming that laboratory mouse strains have over time become optimized for experimental sensitivity rather than for suitability as model organisms, and that this leads to a number of medical fragilities that humans don't have. Particularly in terms of cancer research: the kinds of tumors that pop up in highly inbred short-lived mice apparently don't have a lot in common with human-typical cancers.
I haven't read enough in this area myself to have a very informed opinion, and I can't find much actual research beyond what ...
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)