The Deceptive Turn Thesis seems almost unavoidable if you start from the assumptions "the AI doesn't place an inhumanly high value on honesty" and "the AI is tested on inputs vaguely resembling the real world". That latter assumption is probably unavoidable, unless it turns out that human values can be so generalized as to be comprehensible in inhuman settings. If we're stuck testing an AI in a sandbox that resembles reality then it can probably infer enough about reality to know when it would benefit by dissembling.
New essay summarizing some of my latest thoughts on AI safety, ~3500 words. I explain why I think that some of the thought experiments that have previously been used to illustrate the dangers of AI are flawed and should be used very cautiously, why I'm less worried about the dangers of AI than I used to be, and what are some of the remaining reasons for why I do continue to be somewhat worried.
Backcover celebrity endorsement: "Thanks, Kaj, for a very nice write-up. It feels good to be discussing actually meaningful issues regarding AI safety. This is a big contrast to discussions I've had in the past with MIRI folks on AI safety, wherein they have generally tried to direct the conversation toward bizarre, pointless irrelevancies like "the values that would be held by a randomly selected mind", or "AIs with superhuman intelligence making retarded judgments" (like tiling the universe with paperclips to make humans happy), and so forth.... Now OTOH, we are actually discussing things of some potential practical meaning ;p ..." -- Ben Goertzel