I wonder whether all this worrying about value stability isn't losing sight of exactly this point - just whose values we are talking about.
As I understand it, the friendly values we are talking about are supposed to be some kind of cleaned up averaging of the individual values of a population - the species H. sapiens. But as we ought to know from the theory of evolution, the properties of a population (whether we are talking about stature, intelligence, dentition, or values) are both variable within the population and subject to evolution over time. And that the reason for this change over time is not that the property is changing in any one individual, but rather that the membership in the population is changing.
In my opinion, it is a mistake to try to distill a set of essential values characteristic of humanity and then to try to freeze those values in time. There is no essence of humanity, no fixed human nature. Instead, there is an average (with variance) which has changed over evolutionary time and can be expected to continue to change as the membership in humanity continues to change over time. Most of the people whose values we need to consult in the next millennium have not even been born yet.
If enough people agree with you (and I'm inclined that way myself), then updating will be built into the CEV.
[...] 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.