Eliezer, you must have lowered your intellectual level because these days I can understand your posts again.

You talk about the friendliness problem as if it can be solved separately from the problem of building an AGI, and in anticipation of that event. I mean that you want to delay the creation of an AGI until friendliness is fully understood. Is that right?

Suppose that we had needed to build jet-planes without ever passing through the stage of propeller-based planes, or if we had needed to build modern computers without first building calculators, 8-bit machines etc. Do you think that would be possible? (It's not a rhetorical question... I really don't know the answer).

It seems to me that if we ever build an AGI, there will be many mistakes made along the way. Any traps waiting for us will certainly be triggered.

Perhaps this will all seem clearer when we all have 140 IQ's. Get to work, Razib! :)

Many more people are studying science than can actually hope to find jobs in the field.

The real problem is not a scarcity of people, but a scarcity of _smart_ people. The average guy in the street will not improve his own life or anyone else's by the study of science. Posts for lab technicians are easy enough to fill, after all.

Conversely, the people who really can make a difference by and large do not need any encouragement.

On a practical note, I would be very interested in a discussion of the best ways an individual can make a monetary / political / social contribution to the development of an AGI. Assuming this has already been argued out, does anyone have a link?