[...] 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.
I can't accept this. Many animals are not social, or are social only to the extent of practicing parental care.
Only if it is actually advantageous to them (it?). Your claim would be much more convincing if you could provide examples of what AIs might gain by social interaction with humans, and why the AI could not achieve the same benefits with less risk and effort by exterminating or enslaving us. Without such examples, your bare assertions are completely unconvincing.
Please note that as humans evolved to their current elevated moral plane they occasionally found extermination and enslavement to be more tempting solutions to their social problems than reciprocity. In fact, enslavement is a form of reciprocity - it is one possible solution to a bargaining problem as in Nash(1953). A solution in which one bargainer has access to much better threats than the other.