UFAI isn't necessarily about deception.
Oracle / tool AI is. The usual premise is that questions are asked to the superhuman AI, and responses only implemented if they are comprehensible, sane, and morally acceptable. Your example of satisfies C but still violates Y and Z would be picked up by the human oversight (or, the output is too complicated to be understood, and is shelved). Blindly following the AI's directives is a failure mode the oracle AI path is meant to avoid. Further, search processes do not happen across solutions which are seemingly ok but deviously setup an AI breakout or kill-all-humans scenario just by random chance - the probability of that is astronomically low. So really, the only likely ways in which the AI says to do X, but ends up violating unstated constraints Y and Z is if (a) the human overseers failed at their one and only job, or (b) deception.
Auditing has the potential to slow down the AI.
Yup, it does. This is a race, but the question is not “is this approach faster than straight-up UFAI?” but rather “is this approach faster than other pathways to friendly AI?” FAI is a strict subset of the UFAI problem: there is no approach to FAI which is faster than a straight sprint to UFAI, consequences be damned.
My own informed opinion is that (UF)AGI is only 10-20 years away, max. Provably-friendly AI is not even a well defined problem, but by any definition it is strictly harder. The only estimates I've seen come out of MIRI for their approach puts FAI decades further out (I remember Luke saying 50-70 years). Such a date makes sense when compared with progress in verifiable computing in other fields. But 2nd place doesn't count for anything here.
Oracle / tool AGI has the advantage of making safeguards a parallel development. The core AGI is not provably friendly, and can be developed at the same breakneck pace as one would expect of a hedge fund exploring this area. The security controls can be developed and put in place in parallel, without holding up work on the AGI itself. It does require choosing a particular architecture amenable to auditing, but that's not really a disadvantage as it makes development & testing easier.
You want humans to "take us through the singularity". But we aren't through the singularity until superhuman intelligence exists. Is your plan, therefore, to suppress development of superhuman AI, until there are humans with superhumanly augmented intelligence? Do you plan to audit their development as well?
I'm not sure I understand the question. The point of FAI, CEV, etc., as I understand it, is to encode human morality into something a machine can understand because that machine, not us, will be making the decisions. But if progress comes not from ceding the keys to the kingdom to a machine intelligence, but rather by augmentation of real humans, then why is morality a problem we must solve now? Superhuman humans are still human, and have access to human morality through introspection, the same as we do. Why would you "audit" the mind of a human? That doesn't make any sense, even aside from the plausibility.
As to suppressing development of AGI... no, I don't think that's a wise choice even if it's possible. Mostly because I see no realistic way of doing that short of totalitarian control, and the ends do not justify those means. But I also don't think it would be too hard to transition from oracle AI to human augmentation, especially with the help of a superhuman AGI to develop tools and decipher brain biology.
I am not opposed to the auditing concept, for AI or for augmented humans, but eventually one must directly answer the question, what is the design of a trustworthy superintelligence, in terms that make no reference to human supervision.
Um.. no. That's completely unsubstantiated. The whole point of oracle / tool AI and confinement is to relinquish the need for provably trustworthy superintelligence.
Summary: I do not understand why MIRI hasn’t produced a non-technical (pamphlet/blog post/video) to persuade people that UFAI is a serious concern. Creating and distributing this document should be MIRI’s top priority.
If you want to make sure the first AGI is FAI, one way to do so is to be the first to create an AI, and ensure it is FAI. Another is to persuade people that UFAI is a legitimate concern, and do so in large numbers. Ideally this would become a real concern, so nobody runs into the trap of Eliezer1999ish of “I’m going to build an AI and see how it works”.
1) is tough for an organisation of MIRI’s size. 2) is a realistic goal. It benefits from:
Funding: MIRI’s funding almost certainly goes up if more people are concerned with AI x-risk. Ditto FHI.
Scalability: If MIRI has a new math finding, that's one new theorem. If MIRI creates a convincing demonstration that we have to worry about AI, spreading this message to a million people is plausible.
Partial goal completion: making a math breakthrough that reduces the time to AI might be counter-productive. Persuading an additional person of the dangers of UFAI raises the sanity waterline.
Task difficulty: creating an AI is hard. Persuading people that “UFAI is a possible extinction risk. Take it seriously” is nothing like as difficult. (I was persuaded of this in about 20 minutes of conversation.)
One possible response is “it’s not possible to persuade people without math backgrounds, training in rationality, engineering degrees, etc”. To which I reply: what’s the data supporting that hypothesis? How much effort has MIRI expended in trying to explain to intelligent non-LW readers what they’re doing and why they’re doing it? And what were the results?
Another possible response is “We have done this, and it's available on our website. Read the Five Theses”. To which I reply: Is this is in the ideal form to persuade a McKinsey consultant who’s never read Less Wrong? If an entrepreneur with net worth $20m but no math background wants to donate to the most efficient charity he finds, would he be convinced? What efforts has MIRI made to test the hypothesis that the Five Theses, or Evidence and Import, or any other document, has been tailored to optimise the chance of convincing others?
(Further – if MIRI _does_ think this is as persuasive as it can possibly be, why doesn't it shift focus to get the Five Theses read by as many people as possible?)
Here’s one way to go about accomplishing this. Write up an explanation of the concerns MIRI has and how it is trying to allay them, and do so in clear English. (The Five Theses are available in Up-Goer Five form. Writing them in language readable by the average college graduate should be a cinch compared to that). Send it out to a few of the target market and find the points that could be expanded, clarified, or made more convinced. Maybe provide two versions and see which one gets the most positive response. Continue this process until the document has been through a series of iterations and shows no signs of improvement. Then shift focus to getting that link read by as many people as possible. Ask all of MIRI’s donors, all LW readers, HPMOR subscribers, friends and family etc, to forward that one document to their friends.