The sheer length of GiveWell co-founder and co-executive director Holden Karnofsky's excellent critique of the Singularity Institute means that it's hard to keep track of the resulting discussion.  I propose to break out each of his objections into a separate Discussion post so that each receives the attention it deserves.

Other objections to SI's views

There are other debates about the likelihood of SI's work being relevant/helpful; for example,

• It isn't clear whether the development of AGI is imminent enough to be relevant, or whether other risks to humanity are closer.
• It isn't clear whether AGI would be as powerful as SI's views imply. (I discussed this briefly in Karnofsky/Tallinn 2011.)
• It isn't clear whether even an extremely powerful UFAI would choose to attack humans as opposed to negotiating with them. (I find it somewhat helpful to analogize UFAI-human interactions to human-mosquito interactions. Humans are enormously more intelligent than mosquitoes; humans are good at predicting, manipulating, and destroying mosquitoes; humans do not value mosquitoes' welfare; humans have other goals that mosquitoes interfere with; humans would like to see mosquitoes eradicated at least from certain parts of the planet. Yet humans haven't accomplished such eradication, and it is easy to imagine scenarios in which humans would prefer honest negotiation and trade with mosquitoes to any other arrangement, if such negotiation and trade were possible.)

Unlike the three objections I focus on, these other issues have been discussed a fair amount, and if these other issues were the only objections to SI's arguments I would find SI's case to be strong (i.e., I would find its scenario likely enough to warrant investment in).