Does this AI seem too human?
For current state of the art, we are nowhere near AI which is like the human intelligence which we know. Many people are mislead in their thinking of intelligence because human intelligence is what we know so that is how people think about it. It is a shame because there are real issues with turning over trust to automated systems, some based on machine learning, which are too complex for us to understand how they are making their conclusions, but whenever we talk about AI risks, the risks of sentience always comes up and precludes the discussion relevant to our current technology.
From 2001: A Space Odyssey
The HAL9000 computer which can reproduce, though some experts still prefer to use the word mimic, most of the activities of the human brain.
However, for your question, you are talking about fiction. You are going beyond the current state of the art. Your audience will fall into the same pitfall of thinking of intelligence based on human intelligence. You can easily get a suspension of disbelief over that hump.
That the AI wants to schedule a test even though it had not put its assumptions to test earlier is very natural. A test comes up somewhere in the process, not necessarily earlier. 64
There might be accumulating reasons for testing, which finally cross a watershed.
There is something really brilliant in 2001: A Space Odyssey and in some other good SciFi regarding AI, that the AI's reasoning has a logic to it. Even when HAL2000 has a psychological breakdown, there is a logic underlying it, which we can believe an AI would take.
HAL is given orders to support the mission of the astronauts. HAL is also given orders to support the secret mission of the crew in suspended animation with orders to not let the astronauts know about. This has a logic contradiction because sharing the secret information with the astronauts would better support them on their apparent mission.
So the change with HAL to kill all the astronauts is seen as a psychological break because we identify with that from human intelligence. However, there is an underlying logic. If all the astronauts die, the contradiction is resolved. So the AI searched for a resolution to the logic contradiction, found a scenario where the contradiction is resolved, and switched from the illogical condition to the one which made sense logically.
So your fiction could be brilliant too if there is an underlying logic where it logically makes sense, without (human) emotions. 434