Skynet doesn't believe it is justified in its actions? In what sense does Skynet think that basic moral assertions don't refer to anything real?
Allow me to first spell out what's going on here, from my perspective.
The whole reason you're supposed to hesitate, before destroying an AI which promises an answer to the problem of FAI, is that UFAI is a risk and solutions aren't cheap. An unfriendly AI might wipe out the human race; a friendly AI might create a utopia; and a friendly AI ought to greatly reduce the probability of unfriendly AI. By destroying the AI which promises FAI, you throw away a chance to resolve the UFAI doom that's hanging over us, as well as whatever additional positives would ...
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)