Followup to:  The Ultimate Source, Passing the Recursive Buck

People hear about Friendly AI and say - this is one of the top three initial reactions:

"Oh, you can try to tell the AI to be Friendly, but if the AI can modify its own source code, it'll just remove any constraints you try to place on it."

And where does that decision come from?

Does it enter from outside causality, rather than being an effect of a lawful chain of causes which started with the source code as originally written?  Is the AI the Author* source of its own free will?

A Friendly AI is not a selfish AI constrained by a special extra conscience module that overrides the AI's natural impulses and tells it what to do.  You just build the conscience, and that is the AI.  If you have a program that computes which decision the AI should make, you're done.  The buck stops immediately.