Ooops, logically inconsistent was way too strong. I got carried away with making a point. I was reasoning that: "eat food" is a evolutionary drive; "produce descendants that survive" is also an evolutionary drive; "a human future" wholly contains futures where his descendants survive. From that I concluded that it is unlikely he has no evolutionary drives - I didn't consider the possibility that he is missing some evolutionary drives, including all ones that require a human future - and therefore he is tied to a human future, but finds it expedient for other reasons (contrarian signaling, not admitting defeat in an argument) to claim he doesn't.
It's a finite loss (6.8x10^9 multiplied by loss of 1 human life) but I definitely understand why it looks infinite:
I should have been more clear: I mean, if we believe in the scary idea, there are two effects:
Some set of grandmas die. (finite, comparatively small loss)
Humanity is more likely to go extinct due to an unfriendly AGI. (infinite, comparatively large loss; infinite because of the future humans that would have existed but don't.)
Now, the benefit of believing the Scary Idea is that humanity is less likely to go extinct due to an unfriend...
[...] 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.