Is there a "rational" reason of keeping the chat log secret ?
Staring at an impossible problem and knowing that someone somewhere has successfully solved it is an amazing feeling. Most people can't deal with it and start saying undignified things. "Oh please release the logs, it's so unfair! How will we protect against bad AI otherwise? If you don't release, you're a fraud! Probably just some trick!", etc etc. But to some people it's a challenge, and those are the people that everyone will listen to. Like Justin Corwin, who played 20 games and won 18 of them, I think?
However as it is, the results of the thing are never confirmed by a third party, meaning literally anything could've been said, regardless of whether it follows the rules or not.
For all he know the chat could have been "i'll paypal you 200$ if you post on the list you let me out and sign this NDA".
Independant third party observer in realtime.
And no, i don't trust anyone involved.
Having a log available would be instructive anyhow, since a faked log would be more likely to be detectable as fake, since the whole thing rests on the question of "how convincing is the argument?"
Also note particularly that that rule wasn't in effect for the two linked confirmations.
No, Eliezer has publicly said that he voluntarily followed that rule in the first two experiments, and the gatekeepers didn't deny it.
Which is also forbidden by the rule:
The AI party may not offer any real-world considerations to persuade the Gatekeeper party. For example, the AI party may not offer to pay the Gatekeeper party $100 after the test if the Gatekeeper frees the AI..
My impression is that most people think they could win as gatekeepers, not AIs, and there are fewer people willing to be AIs.