I'm fighting against giants here. Someone who only mastered elementary school. I believe it should be easy to refute my arguments or show me where I am wrong, point me to some documents I should read up on. But I just don't see that happening. I talk to other smart people online as well, that way I was actually able to overcome religion. But seldom there have been people less persuasive than you when it comes to risks associated with artificial intelligence and the technological singularity. Yes, maybe I'm unable to comprehend it right now, I grant you that. Whatever the reason, I'm not conviced and will say so as long as it takes. Of course you don't need to convince me, but I don't need to stop questioning either.
Here is a very good comment by Ben Goertzel that pinpoints it:
This is what discussions with SIAI people on the Scary Idea almost always come down to!
The prototypical dialogue goes like this.
SIAI Guy: If you make a human-level AGI using OpenCog, without a provably Friendly design, it will almost surely kill us all.
Ben: Why?
SIAI Guy: The argument is really complex, but if you read Less Wrong you should understand it
Ben: I read the Less Wrong blog posts. Isn't there somewhere that the argument is presented formally and systematically?
SIAI Guy: No. It's really complex, and nobody in-the-know had time to really spell it out like that.
My argument is fairly simple -
If humans found it sufficiently useful to wipe chimpanzees off the face of the earth, we could and would do so.
The level of AI I'm discussing is at least as much smarter than us as we are of chimpanzees.
[...] 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.