This sounds in the direction of modeling AGI researchers as selfish mutants. Other motivations (e.g. poor Friendliness >theories) and accidents (by researchers who don't understand the danger, or underestimate what they've built) are also >likely.
This matters, since if AGI researchers aren't selfish mutants, you can encourage them to see the need for safety, and >this is one goal of SIAI's outreach.
AGI researchers might not be selfish mutants, but they could still be embedded in corporate structures which make them act that way. If they are a small startup where researchers are in charge, outreach could be useful. What if they're in a big corporation, and they're under pressure to ignore outside influences? (What kind of organisation is most likely to come up with a super-AI, if that's how it happens?)
If FAI does become a serious concern, nothing would stop corporations from faking compliance but actually implementing flawed systems, just as many software companies put more effort into reassuring customers that their products are secure than actually fixing security flaws.
Realistically, how often do researchers in a particular company come to realise what they're doing is dangerous and blow the whistle? The reason whistleblowers are lionised in popular culture is precisely because they're so rare. Told to do something evil or dangerous, most people will knuckle under, and rationalise what they're doing or deny responsibility.
I once worked for a company which made dangerously poor medical software - an epidemiological study showed that deploying their software raised child mortality - and the attitude of the coders was to scoff at the idea that what they were doing could be bad. They even joked about "killing babies".
Maybe it would be a good idea to monitor what companies are likely to come up with an AGI. If you need a supercomputer to run one, then presumably it's either going to be a big company or an academic project?
Maybe it would be a good idea to monitor what companies are likely to come up with an AGI.
Simpler to have infratructure to monitor all companies: corporate reputation systems.
Here's why I'm not going to give money to the SIAI any time soon.
Let's suppose that Friendly AI is possible. In other words, it's possible that a small subset of humans can make a superhuman AI which uses something like Coherent Extrapolated Volition to increase the happiness of humans in general (without resorting to skeevy hacks like releasing an orgasm virus).
Now, the extrapolated volition of all humans is probably a tricky thing to determine. I don't want to get sidetracked into writing about my relationship history, but sometimes I feel like it's hard to extrapolate the volition of one human.
If it's possible to make a Friendly superhuman AI that optimises CEV, then it's surely way easier to make an unFriendly superhuman AI that optimises a much simpler variable, like the share price of IBM.
Long before a Friendly AI is developed, some research team is going to be in a position to deploy an unFriendly AI that tries to maximise the personal wealth of the researchers, or the share price of the corporation that employs them, or pursues some other goal that the rest of humanity might not like.
And who's going to stop that happening? If the executives of Corporation X are in a position to unleash an AI with a monomaniacal dedication to maximising the Corp's shareholder value, it's probably illegal for them not to do just that.
If you genuinely believe that superhuman AI is possible, it seems to me that, as well as sponsoring efforts to design Friendly AI, you need to (a) lobby against AI research by any groups who aren't 100% committed to Friendly AI (pay off reactionary politicians so AI regulation becomes a campaign issue, etc.) (b) assassinate any researchers who look like they're on track to deploying an unFriendly AI, then destroy their labs and backups.
But SIAI seems to be fixated on design at the expense of the other, equally important priorities. I'm not saying I expect SIAI to pursue illegal goals openly, but there is such a thing as a false-flag operation.
While Michelle Bachmann isn't talking about how AI research is a threat to the US constitution, and Ben Goertzel remains free and alive, I can't take the SIAI seriously.