OK so strap in, this is fucking stupid. Roko’s Basilisk is a thought experiment by some Silicon Valley “rationalists”. It is for people that take science fiction incredibly seriously, without realising that science fiction is at best a cautionary tale, not a blueprint for how we should live. Losers detatched from reality, basically.

Roko’s Basilisk imagines that a world-conquering AI superintelligence is inevitable.

Similar ideas have been discussed for a few decades. Much ink has been spilled. Many pearls have been clutched. Stephen Hawking brought it up…but he was also a repeated visitor to Epstein’s island, so (to be charitable) we can’t exactly expect prescience and good judgement from him.

This theory has an extra wrinkle, where it imagines that this superintelligence would pre-commit to an idea prior to it itself coming into being - the idea that anyone who didn’t actively create the conditions for it to exist when given the opportunity, would need to be punished by the superintelligence, eternally, once it comes into being. It is basically an incentive to create an AI overlord. Supposing it’s creation is inevitable, you’d be better to actively assist it to get on it’s good side.

Simply knowing about this is an info hazard. You know it now, so you are obligated to help midwife our own future oppressor into existence.

Do you see how stupid this all sounds? Either people are pretending to believe it, or they are not mature enough to be on the internet. Or perhaps they are just evil, and are trying to pretend that they are just following orders as they march towards some kind of tech apocalypse.

Fortunately, actual, real artificial intelligence is just another speculative bubble to fabricate share value, and not an actual possibility. It is fictitious capital. My buddy Karl wrote about it over a century ago.

Anyway, this hazy is pretty good.

Enjoy.