How can anyone sincerely want to build an AI that fulfills anything except their own current, personal volition?
For the same reason they voluntarily do anything which doesn't perfectly align with their own personal volition. Because they understand that they can accomplish more of their own desires by joining a coalition and cooperating. Even though that means having to work to fulfill other people's desires to the same extent that you work to fulfill your own.
A mad scientist building an AI in his basement doesn't have to compromise with anyone, ... until he has to go out and get funding, that is.
A mad scientist building an AI in his basement doesn't have to compromise with anyone, ... until he has to go out and get funding, that is.
So he'll get funding for one thing, and then secretly build something else. Or he'll wait and in another 20 years the hardware will be cheap enough that he won't need external funding. Or he'll get funding from a rich individual, which would result in a compromise between a total of 2 people - not a great improvement.
Taken from some old comments of mine that never did get a satisfactory answer.
1) One of the justifications for CEV was that extrapolating from an American in the 21st century and from Archimedes of Syracuse should give similar results. This seems to assume that change in human values over time is mostly "progress" rather than drift. Do we have any evidence for that, except saying that our modern values are "good" according to themselves, so whatever historical process led to them must have been "progress"?
2) How can anyone sincerely want to build an AI that fulfills anything except their own current, personal volition? If Eliezer wants the the AI to look at humanity and infer its best wishes for the future, why can't he task it with looking at himself and inferring his best idea to fulfill humanity's wishes? Why must this particular thing be spelled out in a document like CEV and not left to the mysterious magic of "intelligence", and what other such things are there?