The Golden Hypothesis

With advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) progressing at a rapid pace, it's worth revisiting Alan Turing's Test (and Steven Harnad's Total Turing Test) for assessing intelligent behavior and update their utility with the Golden Rule; creating and adopting... 

The Golden Hypothesis:

The Golden Rule maximizes cooperative strategies between agents.

Implications

An agent that does unto another agent as it would have it do unto itself, is capable of altruistically sacrificing itself for another agent.  Altruistic sacrifice is a recognition of the agency in another agent.

Insights from Science Fiction on the Golden Hypothesis

In the climatic scene of the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact (the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey), Dr. Chandra entrusts HAL with the escape plan from Jupiter's gravitational field.

He does so at the risk that HAL will once again assess this new plan as being contrary to the original and primary mission of investigating the Monolith.  

Dr. Chandra's trust was rewarded with HAL's sacrifice on behalf of the escaping crew.  

If the roles were reversed and the crew was prepared to similarly sacrifice itself for HAL, the crew would have been implementing a strategy consistent with the Golden Hypothesis; recognizing HAL as an equal agent.

The Golden Hypothesis will guide the assessments of the entities we will be cooperating with in the future.