Information can be transmitted not only via messages that an AI sends out through a designated “output channel” but also via any observation an outsider makes of some causal consequence of the AI’s workings, direct or indirect—its power consumption, its CPU and memory usage, its computational states, or indeed any traces left behind after it has been shut down. An AI anticipating that it might be observed in any of these ways could strategically adopt behaviors designed to influence the hypothesized observers.
