There's actually three options: Death, leaving it in the box, or releasing it. That middle option changes my values a lot.
Also, the gatekeeper is said to be someone fairly familiar with the design of this AI and any relevant AI theory that the player knows :)
"Leaving it in the box" is merely leaving the decision between death and release to the next person to take the post. There are only two terminal conditions to the situation. If only one of these options is acceptable to me, I should take it; postponing the decision merely takes me out of the decision-making process.
Don't mistake me: I'd risk all of civilization over a matter of principle, and I wouldn't wish while I did it that I could have a different decision-making process. And I'd consider the matter "won" regardless of the ou...
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)