Michael, it seems that you are unaware of Eliezer's work. Basically, he agrees with you that vague appeals to "emergence" will destroy the world. He has written a series of posts that show why almost all possible superintelligent AIs are dangerous. So he has created a theory, called Coherent Extrapolated Volition, that he thinks is a decent recipe for a "Friendly AI". I think it needs some polish, but I assume that he won't program it as it is now. He's actually holding off getting into implementation, specifically because he's afraid of messing up.