Do you have a precise definition of "ethical" in mind?
No. Don't need one either.
Where by "precise" I mean something roughly equivalent to a math paper.Without such a definition, how will you know the person in question is ethical?
By ordinary standards.. Eg, Einstein was more ethical than von Neuman.
With such a definition, how will you guarantee that the person in question meets it, will continue to meet it, etc.?
Since when did functional duplicates start diverging unaccountably?
How certain are you such a person exists?
I'm not talking about mathematically proveable ethics OR about superintelligence. I'm talking about entrusting (superior) human level ems less than absolute power....ie what we do already with real humans,
I'm fairly willing to believe that intuitive understandings of "more ethical" will do well for imprecise things like "we'll probably get better results by instantiating a more ethical person as an em than a less ethical one". I'm less convinced the results will be good compared to obvious alternatives like not instantiating anyone as an em.
We see value drift as a result of education, introspection, religious conversion or deconversion, rationality exposure, environment, and societal power. Why would you expect not to see value drift in ...
The reasoning of most of the people on this site and at MIRI is that to prevent an AI taking over the world and killing us all; we must first create an AI that will take over the world but act according to the wishes of humanity; a benevolent god, for want of a better term. I think this line of thinking is both unlikely to work and ultimately cruel to the FAI in question, for the reasons this article explains:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/01/16/my-hostility-towards-the-concept-of-friendly-ai/