The science fiction trope of a sentient AI turning on the humans, either through some sort of misguided interpretation of its own programming or from a simple desire for self-preservation, has a long history. I first ran into it while watching the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which featured the creepily calm-voiced computer HAL-9000 methodically killing the crew one after another. But the iteration of this idea that I found the most chilling, at least at the time, was an episode of The X Files called "Ghost in the Machine."
The story -- which, admittedly, seemed pretty dated on recent rewatch -- featured an artificial intelligence system that had been built to run an entire office complex, controlling everything from the temperature and air humidity to the coordination of the departments housed therein. Running the system, however, was expensive, and when the CEO of the business talks to the system's designer and technical consultant and recommends shutting it down, the AI overhears the conversation, and its instinct to save its own life kicks in.
Exit one CEO.
Roko's basilisk is named after a guy who went by the handle Roko on the forum LessWrong, and the "basilisk," a mythical creature who could kill you at a glance. The gist is that a superpowerful sentient AI in the future would, knowing its own past, have an awareness of all the people who had actively worked against its creation (as well as the people like me who just think the whole idea is absurd). It would then resent those folks so much that it'd create a virtual reality simulation in which it would recreate our (current) world and torture all of the people on the list.
This, according to various YouTube videos and websites, is "the most terrifying idea anyone has ever created," because just telling someone about it means that now the person knows they should be helping to create the basilisk, and if they don't, that automatically adds them to the shit list.
Now that you've read this post, that means y'all, dear readers. Sorry about that.
Before you freak out, though, let me go through a few reasons why you probably shouldn't.
First, notice that the idea isn't that the basilisk will reach back in time and torture the actual me; it's going to create a simulation that includes me, and torture me there. To which I respond: knock yourself out. This threat carries about as much weight as if I said I was going to write you into my next novel and then kill your character. Doing this might mean I have some unresolved anger issues to work on, but it isn't anything you should be losing sleep over yourself.
Second, why would a superpowerful AI care enough about a bunch of people who didn't help build it in the past -- many of whom would probably be long dead and gone by that time -- to go to all this trouble? It seems like it'd have far better things to expend its energy and resources on, like figuring out newer and better ways to steal the work of creative human beings without getting caught.
Third, the whole "better help build the basilisk or else" argument really is just a souped-up, high-tech version of Pascal's Wager, isn't it? "Better to believe in God and be wrong than not believe in God and be wrong." The problem with Pascal's Wager -- and the basilisk as well -- is the whole "which God?" objection. After all it's not a dichotomy, but a polychotomy. (Yes, I just made that word up. No, I don't care). You could help build the basilisk or not, as you choose -- and the basilisk itself might end up malfunctioning, being benevolent, deciding the cost-benefit analysis of torturing you for all eternity wasn't working out in its favor, or its simply not giving a flying rat's ass who helped and who didn't. In any of those cases, all the worry would have been for nothing.
Fourth, if this is the most terrifying idea you've ever heard of, either you have a low threshold for being scared, or else you need to read better scary fiction. I could recommend a few titles.
On the other hand, there's always the possibility that we are already in a simulation, something I dealt with in a post a couple of years ago. The argument is that if it's possible to simulate a universe (or at least the part of it we have access to), then within that simulation there will be sentient (simulated) beings who will go on to create their own simulations, and so on ad infinitum. Nick Bostrom (of the University of Oxford) and David Kipping (of Columbia University) look at it statistically; if there is a multiverse of nested simulations, what's the chance of this one -- the one you, I, and unfortunately, Donald Trump belong to -- being the "base universe," the real reality that all the others sprang from? Bostrom and Kipping say "nearly zero;" just considering that there's only one base universe, and an unlimited number of simulations, means the chances are we're in one of the simulations.
But. This all rests on the initial conditional -- if it's possible to simulate a universe. The processing power this would take is ginormous, and every simulation within that simulation adds exponentially to its ginormosity. (Yes, I just made that word up. No, I don't care.) So, once again, I'm not particularly concerned that the aliens in the real reality will say "Computer, end program" and I'll vanish in a glittering flurry of ones and zeroes. (At least I hope they'd glitter. Being queer has to count for something, even in a simulation.)
On yet another hand (I've got three hands), maybe the whole basilisk thing is true, and this is why I've had such a run of ridiculously bad luck lately. Just in the last six months, the entire heating system of our house conked out, as did my wife's van (that she absolutely has to have for art shows); our puppy needed $1,700 of veterinary care (don't worry, he's fine now); our homeowner's insurance company informed us out of the blue that if we don't replace our roof, they're going to cancel our policy; we had a tree fall down in a windstorm and take out a large section of our fence; and my laptop has been dying by inches.
So if all of this is the basilisk's doing, then... well, I guess there's nothing I can do about it, since I'm already on the Bad Guys Who Hate AI list. In that case, I guess I'm not making it any worse by stating publicly that the basilisk can go to hell.
But if it has an ounce of compassion, can it please look past my own personal transgressions and do something about Elon Musk? Because in any conceivable universe, fuck that guy.
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