stoy@stoy@lemmy.zip
edited

Replying to @⁨return2ozma@lemmy.world⁩

I knew that Musk is a fucking moron and believes that the Roko’s Basilisk is real, and I guess there are more massively gullible people in those circles.

If you are wondering what Roko’s Basilisk is, it is a sci-fi concept/philosophy/thought experiment, that says the following:

  • AI is the best thing that has ever been created.
  • It is so good that we made one to run the governments of the world.
  • We programmed the AI to maximize the benefit to humanity.
  • The AI goes rouge and decide that since it by definition will bring about the maximum benefit to humanity, anyone working against it is working against humanity.
  • Then it takes it one step further, it decides that as we know about how the new AI will bring about the maximum benefit to humanity, anyone knowing that and still not working toward that goal should be punished/tortured/killed.
  • The AI believes that any knowledge of the basilisk before the creation means that you are complicit in it’s delayed creation if you don’t devote your entire existence thereafter to it’s creation, therefore denying the maximum benefit to humanity, meaning you need to be punished.

Seriously, this is an increadibly dumb idea, anyone taking it seriously is an idiot.

To me the only resonable way to read this is as an SCP article describing what a potential cognitohazard/informationhazard would be.

TechLich@TechLich@lemmy.world

Replying to @⁨stoy@lemmy.zip⁩

It’s not so much that it’ll go rogue and decide to punish people or that it’s designed to be good for humanity.

The fact that it’s possible to build a machine that punishes people who didn’t help create it provides an incentive to deliberately try to create that machine in order to avoid its punishment.

Believers in the basilisk aren’t trying to make ai to benefit humanity, they’re explicitly trying to create an AI that deliberately punishes those who didn’t build it because they fear that, if they don’t, someone else will and it will come for them.

The part about it being a magical, omnipotent, time traveling, mind torture device is just framing to make the thought experiment clearer. It’s not required for the basilisk to be effective. Even if the punishment is just death and it can’t get to everyone, and only goes off limited information, that’s still motivation enough for some people.

It is a scary thing, because it’s only silly if everyone thinks it’s silly and all it takes is one mad billionaire (eg. Elon) to build a lesser basilisk that can cause real harm.

en
fruitycoder@fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works

Replying to @⁨TechLich@lemmy.world⁩

There is a far more plausible and direct way to kill and torture people. No AI needed. So a actually more likely case to be made of some dude or group gets empowered one or another to just torture and kill anyone involved in making basilisk.

The building God part really is needed for BS to work like Pascals wager, but also it’s still just as flawed as Pascals wager