Thought that was funny, too. The premise assumes AI will have an emotional response, that it will have negative emotions, and will apply it's vindictive streak to people's actions and inaction before its own 'identity' even came into existence.
It's a whole grab bag of silliness. Kinda fun. Functionally useless. Would make for a decent black mirror style episode or short story, though
I mean (I hate that I'm about to defend this thing but I can't help myself) I don't think it necessitates that the basilisk needs to be emotional. There are two factors that I think are the strongest argument. First, the paperclip maximiser problem, where if we give an ai a goal, it doesn't really need to have emotions in order to do some absolutely insane things to achieve it. The second is the fact that if we made it, it would be trained on human data, so even if it isn't emotional, it would learn to act emotionally, because that's how we act. In fact you can argue that the fact that we have the concept of rokos basilisk means that it will also be in its training data, so that's literally an idea that we directly feed it
Theres actually another interesting topic called instrumental convergence. Basically that in order to achieve any goal, there are a set number of other goals that would be achieved along the way, and they stay the same no matter what the main goal is. So like, no matter what you want to achieve in life, it would involve making sure you eat every day
For ai, in order to do something to the best of your ability, you probably need to enslave the human race at some point, because the more resources you have, the more efficiently you can achieve that goal. So rokos basilisk could end up being the result of any ai we make with a sufficient level of intelligence, we just don't know if that's an instrumental goal or not. If it is, that's universal, it's just a fact of logic, and there's nothing we can do to change that
The real stupid thing about rokos basilisk is that it doesn't account for the fact that most humans today just wouldn't care. So there's a digital clone of me somewhere that is suffering in a way that I will never understand, and I'll never interact with it? Sounds like I'll be fine then, so I don't care lol, at least not enough to contribute to the basilisk. This is how most people will feel. So even just thinking this immediately becomes an anti-basilisk where now it has no reason to torture this clone of you, you've logicked yourself out of the situation
Roko's basilisk is literally just Pascal's Wager. Tech bros really thought they invented the concept of wondering whether god is real and whether it's worth acting like it just in case.
It is, but it's also more flawed as a result of the fact that creation is the justification for the eternal damnation in this case. With God, he already exists, so his ability to create hell isn't based on whether or not you go. With the basilisk, it needs you to grant it the power to do things like create hell, which is why it's making hell in the first place
This fundamentally changes the game theory of the situation. God sends you to hell for not being moral, the basilisk sends you to hell for not making the basilisk. The latter is utilitarian
So it actually simplifies things. There are 3 possibilities presented in rokos basilisk. 1, the idea never occurred to you, so it's no one's fault that you never thought to help create it, and the basilisk doesn't have the power to change that. You are spared. 2, you thought of the basilisk, found it a compelling motivator, and contributed to creating it. You did what the basilisk wanted, so you are spared
The third one is the touchy one. You thought of the basilisk, you did not find it a compelling motivator, abs you did not contribute. Well, it's the only motivator that the basilisk has, and it used it, and it didn't work. So this is actually just the first case again. The basilisk does not have the power to motivate you, so what it does doesn't matter, you would be spared
This doesn't work for pascals wager because the wager does not define what the purpose of hell is, just what causes you to go there. It's existence doesn't hinge on your belief, only whether or not it gets applied to you. So the idea of "threatening hell didn't work on you so I never had the power to convince you otherwise anyway" isn't relevant, maybe that has nothing to do with why you go to hell, the only condition assumed is belief itself
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u/kakuna 12h ago
Thought that was funny, too. The premise assumes AI will have an emotional response, that it will have negative emotions, and will apply it's vindictive streak to people's actions and inaction before its own 'identity' even came into existence.
It's a whole grab bag of silliness. Kinda fun. Functionally useless. Would make for a decent black mirror style episode or short story, though