I was under the impression that "artificial intelligence" is meant to differentiate human and machine "intelligence" along technical lines, not moral ones, i.e., to emphasize that they solve problems in technically different ways. "Outcome pump" and "really powerful optimization process" are meant to differentiate human and non-human "intelligence" along moral lines; the justification for this distinction is much less clear-cut. I don't criticize "artificial intelligence" much because it's empirically and theoretically demonstrable that humans and machines solve problems in technically different ways, which distinction I thought was the purpose of the term to make.
Does "really powerful optimization process" differentiate at all? Humans are powerful optimization processes too.
One of the most annoying arguments when discussing AI is the perennial "But if the AI is so smart, why won't it figure out the right thing to do anyway?" It's often the ultimate curiosity stopper.
Nick Bostrom has defined the "Orthogonality thesis" as the principle that motivation and intelligence are essentially unrelated: superintelligences can have nearly any type of motivation (at least, nearly any utility function-bases motivation). We're trying to get some rigorous papers out so that when that question comes up, we can point people to standard, and published, arguments. Nick has had a paper accepted that points out the orthogonality thesis is compatible with a lot of philosophical positions that would seem to contradict it.
I'm hoping to complement this with a paper laying out the positive arguments in favour of the thesis. So I'm asking you for your strongest arguments for (or against) the orthogonality thesis. Think of trying to convince a conservative philosopher who's caught a bad case of moral realism - what would you say to them?
Many thanks! Karma and acknowledgements will shower on the best suggestions, and many puppies will be happy.