The quotes have been relevant as they showed that Yudkowsky clearly believes in his intellectual and epistemic superiority, yet any corroborative evidence seems to be missing. Yes, there is this huge amount of writings on rationality and some miscellaneous musing on artificial intelligence. [...]
Yudkowsky is definitely a clever fellow. He may not have fancy qualifications - and he is far from infallible - but he is pretty smart.
In the particular post in question, I am pretty sure he was being silly - which is a rather unfortunate time to be claiming superiority.
However, I don't really know. The stunt created intrigue, mystery, the forbidden, added to the controversy. Overall, Yudkowsky is pretty good at marketing - and maybe this was a taste of it.
I wonder if his Harry Potter fan-fic is marketing - or else how he justifies it.
[...] 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.