That doesn't sound like an argument for making it open-source. Designing a nuke was also difficult back in the day, but the building of potentially very destructive things shouldn't be made easier by throwing any and all information public.

Incidentally, I *do* agree that SIAI's current primary strategy will likely fail (though I'm not certain that it'll fail, and think effort should be put into trying). SIAI doesn't make bold statements regarding the likelihood of success either. But still, the scenario SIAI is currently primarily striving for would be vastly preferable to the realistic alternatives, and needs to be tried. (I think your description of what SIAI is doing isn't entirely accurate, but I won't go into that now.)

The alternatives are things like working in cooperation with the military/etc, which I think is more likely to happen than SIAI's primary plan working. At some point, military/etc folks will fully wake up to the importance of AGI, and they'll start going around making offers people can't refuse. SIAI needs to try to have a good deal of knowledge and competence by then that they can bargain with.