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Hmm... the idea of having an AI "test itself" is an interesting one for creating honesty, but two concerns immediately come to mind:
The testing environment, or whatever background data the AI receives, may be sufficient evidence for it to infer the true purpose of its test, and thus we're back to the sincerity problem. (This is one of the reasons why people care about human-intelligibility of the AI structure; if we're able to see what it's thinking, it's much harder for it to hide deceptions from us.)
A core feature of the testing environment / the AI's method of reasoning about the world may be an explicit acknowledgement that its current value function may differ from the 'true' value function that its programmers 'meant' to give it, and it has some formal mechanisms to detect and correct any misunderstandings it has. Those formal mechanisms may work at cross purposes with a test on its ability to satisfy its current value function.
Hi Vaniver, yes my point is exactly that of creating honesty, because that would at least allow us to test reliably so it sounds like it should be one of the first steps to aim for. I'll just write a couple of lines to specify my thought a little further, which is to design an AI that: 1- uses an initial utility function U, defined in absolute terms rather than subjective terms (for instance "survival of the AI" rather than "my survival"); 2- doesn't try to learn another utility function for humans or for other agents, but uses for ever... (read more)