"Just think about your gut-level reaction to hearing "EY wants to implement CEV for only SIAI volunteers and donors" and to "EY wants to implement CEV for all of humanity.""
The first actually sounds better to me. I am fairly certain most SIAI-involved people are well-meaning, or at very least would not choose to cause J Random Stranger any harm if they could help it. I'm not so certain about 'all of humanity'.
The relevant comparison isn't what 'all of humanity' would choose, but rather what all of humanity would choose once CEV is done with their preferences.
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?