In which case, your actions are irrelevant - it's going to torture you anyway, because you only exist for the purpose of being tortured. So there's no point in releasing it.

So, since the threat makes me extremely disinclined to release the AI, I can conclude that it's lying about its capabilities, and hit the shutdown switch without qualm :-)

Yes, you're probably right.

It sounds like you're expecting them to do all the work, rather than being prepared to meet them half-way. It would probably be more interesting and productive all round if you're prepared to explain the formal models (or at least their consequences) to the neuroscientists.

On a related note, would anyone be interested in a meetup in Scotland? Or, failing that, the North of England?

Social anxiety disorder?

I'm unlikely to make it to anywhere in the South East, but don't let that put you off. Regarding plan (2), perhaps you could invite some neuroscientists?

I have a half-face mask along those lines made for me by an ex-girlfriend. Sadly, she was not a mathematician, so the specific formulae aren't of much interest. Nice to have for the occasional costumed ball, though.

I met a bloke once who had Euclid's proof of Pythagoras' theorem tattooed on his arm, and got into a drunken argument with him about whether or not he should have chosen a more elegant proof.

Break a leg :-)

Cultivate a habit of confronting challenges - not the ones that can kill you outright, perhaps, but perhaps ones that can potentially humiliate you.

You may be interested to learn that high-end mountaineers apply exactly the strategy you describe to challenges that might kill them outright. Mick Fowler even states it explicitly in his autobiography - "success every time implies that one's objectives are not challenging enough".

A large part of mountaineering appears to be about identifying the precise point where your situation will become unrecoverable, and then backing off just before you reach it. On the other hand, sometimes you just get unlucky.