Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk

44 pages. I don't see anything much like the argument being asked for. The lack of an index doesn't help. The nearest thing I could find was this:

It may be tempting to ignore Artificial Intelligence because, of all the global risks discussed in this book, AI is hardest to discuss. We cannot consult actuarial statistics to assign small annual probabilities of catastrophe, as with asteroid strikes. We cannot use calculations from a precise, precisely confirmed model to rule out events or place infinitesimal upper bounds on their probability, as with proposed physics disasters. But this makes AI catastrophes more worrisome, not less.

He also claims that intelligence could increase rapidly with a "dominant" probabilty.

I cannot perform a precise calculation using a precisely confirmed theory, but my current opinion is that sharp jumps in intelligence are possible, likely, and constitute the dominant probability.

This all seems pretty vague to me.

It isn't clear to me that producing such a document is a "high-priority task" - since it isn't clear that the thesis is actually correct - or that the SIAI folks actually believe it.

Most of the participants here seem to be falling back on: even if it is unlikely, it could happen, and it would be devastating, so therefore we should care a lot - which seems to be a less unreasonable and more defensible position.

You lost me at that sharp swerve in the middle. With probabilities attached to the scary idea, it is an absolutely meaningless concept. What if its probability were 1 / 3^^^3, should we still care then? I could think of a trillion scary things that could happen. But without realistic estimates of how likely it is to happen, what does it matter?

Multiple links are not an answer - to be what Goertzel was looking for it has to be a single link that sets out this position.

Heh. I've read virtually all those links. I still have the three following problems.

1. Those links are about as internally self-consistent as the Bible.
2. There are some fundamentally incorrect assumptions that have become gospel.
3. Most people WON'T read all those links and will therefore be declared unfit to judge anything.

What I asked for was "an immediately available well-structured top-down argument".

It would be particularly useful and effective if SIAI recruited someone with the opposite point of view to co-develop a counter-argument thread and let the two revolve around each other and solve some of these issues (or, at least, highlight the base important differences in opinion that prevent them from solution). I'm more than willing to spend a ridiculous amount of time on such a task and I'm sure that Ben would be more than willing to devote any time that he can tear away from his busy schedule.