Goddamn, I thought I was unpopular

That wasn't what I claimed, I proposed that the current, most promising methods of producing an FAI are far too likely to produce a UFAI to be considered safe

The point I am making is that machine learning, though not provably safe, is the most effective way we can imagine of making the utility function. It's very likely that many AI's are going to be created by this method, and if the failure rate is anywhere near as high as that for humans, this could be very serious indeed. Some misguided person may attempt to create an FAI using machine learning and then we may have the situation in the H+ article

Only a pantheist would claim that evolution is a personal being, and so it can't "try to" do anything. It is, however, a directed process, serving to favor individuals that can better further the species.

But I agree that we shouldn't rely on machine learning to find the right utility function.

How would you suggest we find the right utility function without using machine learning?

I never said not understanding our creations is good; I only said AI research was successful. I have not read Superintelligence, but I appreciate just how dangerous AI could be.

I never claimed that evolution did a good job, but I would argue that it gave us a primary directive; to further the human species. All of our desires are part of our programming; they should perfectly align with desires which would optimize the primary goal, but they don't. Simply put, mistakes were made. As the most effective way of developing optimizing programs we have seen is through machine learning, which is very similar to evolution; we should be very careful of the desires of any singleton created by this method.

I'm not sure of your assertion that the best advances in AI so far came from mimicking the brain.

Mimicking the human brain is fundamental to most AI research; on DeepMind's website, they say that they employ computational neuroscientists and companies such as IBM are very interested in whole brain emulation.

Okay everyone, I've messed this up again, please leave this post alone, I'll re-upload it again later

But I don't think that MIRI will succeed at building an FAI by non-anthropomorphic means in time.

There is no ghost in a (relatively) simple machine, but an AI is not simple. The greatest success in AI research have been by imitating what we understand of the human mind. We are no longer programming AI's, we are imitating the structure of the human brain and then giving it a directive (for example with Google's deepmind). With AI's, there is a ghost in the machine, i.e. we do not know that it is possible to give a sentient being a prime directive. We have no idea whether it will desire what we want it to desire, and everything could go horribly wrong if we attempt to force it to.

The point of the article is that the greatest effect of FAI research is irony, that in trying to prevent a psychopathic AI we are making it more likely that one will exist, because by mentally restraining the AI we are giving it reasons to hate us