Suppose an AI knows that during the year 2025 it will be the most intelligent AI around, but that all its thoughts and actions will be logged, and those logs will be reviewed for honesty and benevolence in the year 2027 by several independent computers each of which will, by then, be smarter than the AI was back in 2025.

Would it try to deceive, if it knew that by doing so it would be discovered 2 years later and then turned off?

There's a detailed essay discussing this an other related issues:
https://www.lesswrong.com/post...

If you really want to deter it, don't threaten to ban people from driving, even when not using a mobile phone.

Threaten to ban them from owning or using a mobile phone, even when not in a car.

Recursive ray tracing can produce wonderfully realistic images. But most video games don't use it, because they don't need to use it. They can get a 'good enough' image using short cuts (such as imposters) for most of it.

If we were living in a simulation of the planet Earth, would the Architect need to use a full implementation of quantum mechanics on every atom of the Earth in order to fool us? Or could large bits of it be done by cheaper approximations, except for the short time periods when they are being looked at in detail by the instruments of physicists?

There's already a single player mode, for days when you don't feel like interacting with other players, and a 'friends only' mode where you only interact with people on your friends list.

Your ships and money are shared between modes. If they added an off-line mode too, then they'd face complaints like "I've just spent 60 hours in off-line mode working my way up to an Asp, and now you're telling me that I can't use it when I play with my friends??!? W.T.H. You guys suck!"

" a game-changing intellectual endeavour achieved by applying sustained effort to original insights afforded by superlative mastery of one or more subjects gained through outstanding intelligence and endless learning. "

Gary Taubes is an advocate of high-fat/low-carbohydrate diets. He seriously overstates the importances of the source of calories, compared to the calorie total itself, and willfully ignores the strong evidence linking saturated fats to heart disease.

He has a habit of jumping on any bandwagon that supports his conclusions, regardless of whether the bandwagon is valid or not.

His support should therefore not be given much weight in your deliberations.