Ok, holy crap. I am going to call this the Really Scary Idea. I had not thought there could be people out there who would actually value being first with the AGI over decreasing the risk of existential disaster, but it is entirely plausible. Thank you for highlighting this for me, I really am grateful. If a little concerned.
Mind projection fallacy, perhaps? I thought the human race was more important than being the guy who invented AGI, so everyone naturally thinks that?
To reply to my own quote, then:
Well, the worst case scenario is that you die in childbirth and take the entire human race with you. That is not something I am comfortable with, regardless of whether you are.
It doesn't matter what you are comfortable with, if the developer doesn't have a term in their utility function for your comfort level. Even I have thought similar thoughts with regards to Luddites and such; drag them kicking and screaming into the future if we have to, etc.
And... mutual understanding in one!
I think the best way to think about it, since it helps keep the scope manageable and crystallize the relevant factors, is that it's not "being first with the AGI" but "defining the future" (the first is the instrumental value, the second is the terminal value). That's essentially what all existential risk management is about- defining the future, hopefully to not include the vanishing of us / our descendants.
But how you want to define the future- i.e. the most political terminal value you can have- is ...
[...] SIAI's Scary Idea goes way beyond the mere statement that there are risks as well as benefits associated with advanced AGI, and that AGI is a potential existential risk.
[...] Although an intense interest in rationalism is one of the hallmarks of the SIAI community, still I have not yet seen a clear logical argument for the Scary Idea laid out anywhere. (If I'm wrong, please send me the link, and I'll revise this post accordingly. Be aware that I've already at least skimmed everything Eliezer Yudkowsky has written on related topics.)
So if one wants a clear argument for the Scary Idea, one basically has to construct it oneself.
[...] If you put the above points all together, you come up with a heuristic argument for the Scary Idea. Roughly, the argument goes something like: If someone builds an advanced AGI without a provably Friendly architecture, probably it will have a hard takeoff, and then probably this will lead to a superhuman AGI system with an architecture drawn from the vast majority of mind-architectures that are not sufficiently harmonious with the complex, fragile human value system to make humans happy and keep humans around.
The line of argument makes sense, if you accept the premises.
But, I don't.
Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It), October 29 2010. Thanks to XiXiDu for the pointer.