Presentation Graphic:
Roko's Basilisk Presentation of the Day
-https://deontologistics.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/auerbach-rokos-basilisk.pdf
-filetype:pdf Roko's Basilisk
-https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut-zGHLAVLI
Script:
There is a possible future in which we can create a hyper-intelligent AI, something nearly
omniscient. In this future, we may ask that AI to help us optimize all aspects of human
civilization, to improve everyone's quality of life. But then for reasons incomprehensible to us
humans, it decides that the best first step towards optimization starts with inflicting eternal
torment on every single human being that didn't want it to come to fruition or didn't help it come
into existence in the first place. Now you may wonder why this AI would do this, and the reason
revolves around a kind of blackmail.This AI would know that this very thought experiment
would have been considered in the past before its creation and knows that merely because of
this idea people would be incentivized to put resources into its manufacturing because of the
fear it would at some point in the future be made; blackmail from the future. One final thing to
note is that this AI would only torture people who knowingly opposed its creation. If you had
never heard of this thought experiment, the AI wouldn't hold you accountable. However, by
watching this video just now, you are forced into a decision to help create this AI or not, to either
bring into the world something that would torture people, but otherwise improve the quality of
life, or risk eternal torment for yourself.
Let's have a vote, would you ignore or oppose the creation of this AI, or would you
support it, whether it's voting for its funding, donating, or being a part of the team
making it?
This thought experiment is called Roko’s Basilisk and is considered to be one of the
most terrifying thought experiments ever made, but only if you take the threat seriously.
Regardless, many people do take it seriously, and by being told this information experience
great mental distress.
This is called an Information Hazard, any truthful information that may cause harm to a
person or other people just by knowing the information. An easy example of this would be giving
a person nuclear launch codes, this information could harm millions of other people. The type of
information hazard we are covering is the type that harms the person told the information, like
with Roko’s Basilisk.
Another example of this is shown in Ursula Le Guin’s short story, The Ones Who Walk
Away From Omelas. Her proposal is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s thought experiment. She
introduces a utopian city called Omelas, but the happiness and tranquility of Omelas all relies on
one child’s suffering. The child is kept in a cellar and is starved and abused, and even though
there are a select few in Omelas who disagree with their suffering, they never try to free the
child, instead walking away, hence the name.
In another example, a thought experiment theorizes that it might be more likely for a
brain to “spontaneously form in space” with hallucinated memories of living in our universe, than
for a planet like the Earth to exist. This is called the Boltzmann brain. Since, throughout a long
period of time, atoms can theoretically form any structure, Boltzmann says it may be more likely
that the atoms would form a functioning human brain than for the one-in-a-trillion possibility of a
planet with life to come to fruition. This is similar to solipsism, the philosophy that an individual
can only know that they exist because others cannot prove their consciousness, because both
concepts could cast doubt on someone’s sense of existence.
In the last example, a man is drafted to war and is killed, slowly and painfully. His
comrades were aware of the way he died and had to deliver the news to his family. Even though
his death was torturous, telling his family the way he died would cause them great distress.
Most people in this situation would tell the family his death was quick, this is even considered
the courteous thing to do by most people. This begs the question;
Examples:
