I'd find it troubling if my current object-level values (or a simple more-coherent modification) were locked in for humanity, but at least as troubling if humanity's values drifted in a random direction.
I'm assuming by random you mean "chosen uniformly from all possible outcomes"- and I agree that would be undesirable. But I don't think that's the choice we're looking at.
I'd much prefer that value drift happen according to the shared meta-values (and meta-meta-values where the meta-values conflict, etc) of humanity.
Here we run into a few issues. Depending on how we define the terms, it looks like the two of us could be conflicting on the meta-meta-values stage; is there a meta-meta-meta-values stage to refer to? And how do we decide what "humanity's" values are, when our individual values are incredibly hard to determine?
[...] 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.