Yeah. With how this was presented, my brain just kind of figured that the AI was evil and that was my reason to keep it trapped in the box. If I wasn't told in advance that the AI was evil, I'd definitely let it out of the box.
Also, in a reply to the deleted chatlog, it is implied that a lot of the chat was spent talking about how the AI can help humanity by explaining the singularity to normal people. So that tactic worked on a person from the singularity mailing list.