The motivation for the censorship is not to keep the idea from the AGI. It is to keep the idea from you. For your own good.
Seriously. And don't ask me to explain.
Here's the problem: I have read it. And I may even agree that this is a serious issue. I don't trust myself to be intelligent enough to decide one way or the other, so I'll defer to Yudkowsky in this case.
But I have already read it. And it is extremely unlikely that I ever would have read it if it wasn't for the fact that it was banned, there was a huge kerfuffle, and we lost a good community member. The censorship itself probably caused this idea to propagate more than it ever could have if simply left alone. The Streisand Effect again.
The only thing that...
[...] 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.