Hi, anotheruser. Welcome to LW. Please don't be upset that some of your comments/posts are getting downvoted, this happens to pretty much everyone who enters this community. But I congratulate you on your first step: becoming a participant rather than a lurker.
There are a lot of questions that this community has already answered, and I'm sure you understand why they wouldn't want to answer the same questions over and over, hence MixedNuts' comment, and hence the downvotes. This is nothing personal.
If you haven't read through the Sequences yet, please do. It will teach you a lot about the things that most people here assume you already know, and it will show you what problems this community is trying to solve and how it's approaching them.
In the meantime, please continue to participate. Comment, ask other people questions, etc... And let me know if you have any questions.
edit: I think I have phrased this really poorly and that this has been misinterpreted. See my comment below for clarification.
A lot of thought has been put into the discussion of how one would need to define the goals of an AI so that it won't find any "loopholes" and act in an unintended way.
Assuming one already had an AI that is capable of understanding human psychology, which seems necessary to me to define the AI's goals anyway, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the AI would have an understanding of what humans want?
If that is the case, would the following approach work to make the AI friendly?
-give it the temporary goal to always answer questions thruthfully as far as possible while admitting uncertainty
-also give it the goal to not alter reality in any way besides answering questions.
-ask it what it thinks would be the optimal definition of the goal of a friendly AI, from the point of view of humanity, accounting for things that humans are too stupid to see coming.
-have a discussion between it and a group of ethicists/philosophers wherein both parties are encouraged to point out any flaws in the definition.
-have this go on for a long time until everyone (especially the AI, seeing as it is smarter than anyone else) is certain that there is no flaw in the definition and that it accounts for all kinds of ethical contingencies that might arise after the singularity.
-implement the result as the new goal of the AI.
What do you think of this approach?