You're making strong assumptions about what I am, and who I've talked to :-)
Given my epistemic state it was a reasonable guess that you haven't talked to a lot of people that do not already fit the SI/LW memeplex.
I've talked with actual AI researchers and neuroscientists (I'm a mathematician myself) - we're even holding conference full of these kinds of people. If we have time to go through the arguments, generally they end up agreeing with my position (which is that intelligence explosions are likely dangerous, and not improbable enough that we shouldn't look into them).
Fascinating. This does not reflect my experience at all. Have those people that ended up agreeing with you published their thoughts on the topic yet? How many of them have stopped working on AI and instead started to assess the risks associated with it?
I'd also like to know what conference you are talking about, other than the Singularity Summit where most speakers either disagree or talk about vaguely related research and ideas or unrelated science fiction scenarios.
There is also a difference between:
Friendly AI advocate: Hi, I think machines might become very smart at some point and we should think about possible dangers before we build such machines.
AI researcher: I agree, it's always good to be cautious.
and
Friendly AI advocate: This is crunch time! Very soon superhuman AI will destroy all human value. Please stop working on AI and give us all your money so we can build friendly AI and take over the universe before an unfriendly AI can do it and turn everything into paperclips after making itself superhumanly smart within a matter of hours!
AI researcher: Wow, you're right! I haven't thought about this at all. Here is all my money, please save the world ASAP!
I am not trying to ridicule anything here. But there is a huge difference between having Peter Norvig speak at your conference about technological change and having him agree with you about risks from AI.
What it generally was:
AI Researcher: "Fascinating! You should definitely look into this. Fortunately, my own research has no chance of producing a super intelligent AGI, so I'll continue. Good luck son! The government should give you more money."
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.