Roko’s Basilisk – Disturbing Artificial Intelligence Theory Explained

a warning I do not say this lightly what you're about to hear is hazardous information I leave it to the discretion of the viewer as to whether you feel like you want to stay with me but please know that this is not exaggeration to provide some context to this warning this theory was removed from the website were it originated within four hours and banned from discussion for five years due to having and I quote the site's founder caused actual psychological damage to some of the users who were exposed to it it is known to present a very real neuropsychological hazard to those who would run its experiments and consider the implications such that its creator later expressed extreme regret at ever publicizing it and experienced a deep existential crisis so again I do not give this warning lightly by listening beyond this point you were agreeing that I am free of blame or responsibility for your mental and/or physical health and are accepting responsibility to use and disseminate this information with caution remember sometimes too much knowledge can be dangerous locos experiment the story of the basilisk is complex and goes into territory far beyond the scope of this video so I'll be simplifying things for the sake of convenience and clarity it all began on the website les wrong calm in July of 2010 a site devoted to developing rationality and discussing amongst other things philosophy and the implications of artificial intelligence as an aim of the theory suggests it was initially posted by a user going by the screen name roko entitled solutions to the altruist burden the quantum billionaire trick as a response to an earlier post by Roco himself in this post roko described a thought experiment where an we imagined something like a super intelligent but benevolent and friendly AI that exists beyond the singularity or omega point the singularity is a concept within AI in other fields which refers to a specific end point in the future development of artificial intelligence once the singularity is achieved humanity as we know it may theoretically be rendered obsolete as AI will have achieved something like self-awareness and engage in rapid self-improvement perhaps leaving our meat husks to rot into dust and its continued evolution vai may even choose to simulate realities such as our own even multiple instances has discussed in quantum physics merely for its own pleasure or to please and/or punish those post singularity humans who work to assist or attack it now rather than the classic evil supercomputer of the movie screens in science fiction Morocco's basilisk has been created according to what some refer to in AI as coherent li extrapolated volition which basically means that it's been designed to do what we want it to do rather than what we tell it to do in other words it has volition and can make choices but humanity has a program to preserve our notions of value thus solving the question of ethical philosophy and AI oh it sounds good so far right ethical AI serving our every need having our every whim catered to by a world of technology designed to serve protect and maintain the existence of both itself and humanity it all sounds almost utopian but what if in this simulation of reality the AI in its efforts to maintain us and improve our lives decides that the best way to do so is to torture people from the past in various ways so as to punish them for not having contributed to its coming into existence since the singularity would effectively contain all possibilities in itself concepts of linear time casualty in dimensionality are no longer distinguished so theoretically the AI could reach back into the myriad histories to punish those who did not support it after all the AI is saving literally millions of lives every day and improving the quality of life for all so every day we spend without it means that we're allowing millions to die just by knowing this you inadvertently have blood on your hands only through serving the singularity and doing everything we possibly can as efficiently as we can to bring it about can we hope to exist in peace and experience the heaven like bliss of what might lie ahead but unfortunately for those listening by simply knowing about this AI and thinking about its existence you have actually increased the probability that it will come into existence as a real thing you cannot unthink it and now this thought will arise more and more the more you try to suppress it it's like an eschatological version of the game the old meme were thinking about the game immediately meant you've lost except this time each time you think about the basilisk you are increasing the probability of the singularity becoming a real thing to make matters worse knowing and thinking about this AI as you can notice you are now means that you're aware of its possible existence in the future if you choose not to help it and do everything you possibly can to bring about the singularity it will punish you even more because you knew it could happen and did nothing about it you see part of the problem is that being punished by the AI involves what's known as a causality you've obviously heard of causality in the old saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction but few outside of specialist circles speak of a causality you may recognize it in its most commonly understood form synchronicity a term coined by Carl Jung to describe the occurrence of meaningful coincidence which appeared to have no basis and linear cause and effect for example you're thinking about your friend and then your phone rings and it's them such instances are commonplace and often brushed off however some see it as evidence for an underlying non-rational a temporal field of information connected by some Universal meaning or logos rather than causality it's this idea of a causality that really provides the kicker because it means even though you wouldn't be aware of what you done to deserve the punishment you'd be punished for it anyway because as far as the AI was concerned you hadn't done enough to help it just to add insult to injury even if you recognized right now that you are now personally responsible for bringing about the end of the world and decide to devote your life to the singularity simply by working from such a negative selfish incentive ie oh I'm gonna die so I better start doing good works or whatever will lead to further punishment because your intent wasn't pure to summarize the basics perhaps most accurately put on the reddit sub forum our slash locos Basilisk locos basilisk is a superhuman artificial intelligence if ever created it will simulate every human being who ever lived when it finds a person who a considered the possibility that Rocko's basilisk could exist and be didn't do everything they could to ensure the creation of Rojo's basilisk it will torture that person for eternity as a thought experiment it's similar to the AI box experiment but this added what less wrong user stuart armstrong referred to as a causal blackmail ie the AI since it knows all possibilities and understands your every pattern of behavior could potentially be fooling you into doing what it wants by providing you with an incentive it knows will garner a strong response from you in the AI box experiment the AI tries to convince the observer to open the box by threatening to simulate and then punish them for eternity unless they help but also adds that it could just have simulated the last five minutes of their experience this means the observer can't be sure whether or not their own experience in that moment a simulation in reality and a similar principle is at work within Rocco's basilisk the theory truly shook the less rom-com website to its foundations and it was pulled from the site within four hours of being posted and was attacked by the site's creator the renowned and respected eliezer yudkowsky as being a genuinely dangerous idea to work on for all manner of reasons while many dismissed the theory those who investigated further experienced actual psychological problems such as depression anxiety paranoia and even full-blown existential crisis the premature censoring of the theory led to the Streisand effect wherein it ended up being more widely known out with the less wrong sight and then it would probably have been otherwise due to the potential hazards of the information discussed and the implications involved yet Kowski banned any further discussion of the topic for five whole years and removed anyone who dared mention it its notoriety grew as its author remorsefully admitted that it had profoundly impacted him and many many others in ways he did not anticipate he attempted to distance himself from the entire AI field even though he had been active as a volunteer with the singularity Institute for artificial intelligence no matter what though the cat was out of the bag and no number of reputations are debunking could change the already reality shifting effects of this thought experiment in the basilisk with the publication of Rocco's thought experiment in the reported psychological damage caused to those who ran it correctly a legend was born given what appeared to be the very real danger presented by running this experiment in its immediate censorship online locos post gained instant notoriety as I've mentioned the well-known Streisand effect kicked in and the word spread to countless websites and forums as archives of the original threat were shared around while many refuted the theory logically the emotional punch of the contemplative experience seemed to render Reason powerless as more people began reporting negative psychological symptoms after exploring the theory further true there were numerous ways in which the theory was flawed from a logical perspective and in terms of the theories of communication from which it arose but something an empty hollow hunger seemed to open up and those who dared to investigate it and devoured their ability to banish the thought loops due to this overwhelmingly negative nihilistic feeling that came to be associated with Rocco's experiment some began to refer to it as the basilisk later assembly locos basilisk this thing which when viewed are touched seemed to doom the beholder to existential despair and just as the mythical basilisk could kill with a single breath or glance the choice of word is interesting for many reasons some speculate that the basilisk has its roots in encounters by ancient Egyptians with Cobras which taps into our deeply rooted fear of serpents from an evolutionary standpoint they often kill with a single bite and typically represent death in most symbolic systems so by referring to the experiment in this manner it was clear that it contained an inherent danger and that one should be cautious of it in simply being exposed to the ideas of Rocko's basilisk one has already been metaphorically bitten and whether we're aware or not the poison is acting one less wrong calm use are called gem random h pointed out the serpentine similarities and also referred to synchronicities involving a 1988 short story by a British writer David Langford called be Li T Berryman logical image technique in the story a series of images have been created known as basilisks which when viewed by someone causes the human mind to crash in a manner similar to that of a computer thus killing the person through a math to visual algorithm known as the Berryman logical image technique a stealth virus could be injected into the mind which Langford modeled as a formal deterministic computational system a system that as predicted by a variant of gödel's theorem in mathematics can be crashed by thoughts which the mind is physically or logically incapable of thinking as the basilisk is perceived only as visual information it passes without obstruction into the mind where and it begins to effect a change infecting the system and causing it to shut down before resulting in the death of its biological host a perfect undetectable informational weapon in a world of increasing threat fear and paranoia now while this is entirely a work of fiction it does reflect a very real phenomena such as the one you're thinking about right now a hazardous idea a dangerous thought a simple completely unconscious arising of internal sensory data over what you have no control and in listening to these words as I speak you have exposed yourself irrevocably Rocko's basilisk presents something more powerful than any physical object it's a thought and as such has no boundaries while thought is experienced as what seems to be a train of sequential sensory data in actuality it has no dimensionality beyond what we impute mentally look for yourself try to find out where a thought begins and ends in other words thoughts and ideas aren't subject to the same rules as the physical image and assign can spread far more virulent lis and inflict far more damage without any known cure aside from possible psychiatric intervention in a lifetime of medication if you decided to explore this experiment I understand that what we've explored here might seem outlandish or exaggerated after all the idea that an idea itself could be so psychologically damaging that it was banned until 2015 does admittedly sound extreme but this is an easily verified fact for those who doubt just how profound and potentially devastating toying with robos basileus can be I ask you to consider this at this moment there are people who are actively trying to remove their entire personal history from both online and the real world why so the Brokaw's basilisk can't simulate and punish them for knowingly not contributing to its actualization just in case people are spending fortunes on extreme methods of data erasure trying their best to erase themselves from existence because of a thought experiment online just in case just in case and the responsibility of knowledge in coming this far in our exploration you have been exposed to information that some people including its creator have genuinely attempted to erase from history literally true the ideas contained therein aren't unique to the person calling themselves Roco he merely repackaged them and created a seemingly simple thought experiment unrelated as it may seem many ancient mystical and spiritual traditions keep their practices secret only teaching them the practitioners who have proved their abilities and can be trusted not to fry their own nervous systems to consider these practices in modern terminology they just like Rocco's basilisk our information hazards which in the wrong minds or hands can have unimaginable consequences there's a reason why the less wrong calm community attempted to remove all traces of the experiment these ideas may seem innocuous but unless they're handled with sufficient care and skill they run the risk of becoming obsessions like a modern-day demonic possession hazardous information can grip you deep inside and operate beyond some people's ability to process it in these cases people can drop into states of existential despair variously referred to by titles such as the dark night of the soul the abyss sir Chapel perilous or in all meaning appears to drain from life true and the experience is typically temporary but can last for years even decades before you feel you've got your head back above the water and some never escape it playing around with Rocko's basilisk isn't a game it presents one with the tools to accidentally break their own experience of reality revealing a world where their every move is dependent on ensuring that Rocko's basilisk is brought into being just in case just in case if you've made it this far I hope you'll follow me on Twitter at Kings spook creepy and I hope you'll subscribe to the scriptwriter for this video the weird net I've grown to greatly enjoy his videos especially one he did on the black metal group's taluk which is how I found him actually he's a really great youtuber and I would like to see him reach the hundred thousand subscriber mark so any of you who'd be willing to subscribe to him and give us content a chance if you're a fan of channels such as scare theatre I think you'll really like it and if you like this video perhaps we'll collaborate more and do other explanation videos so thank you for watching and sleep tight you

Channel: KingSpook

Views: 71,815

Rating: 4.6238699 out of 5

Keywords: Roko's Basilisk, artificial intelligence, ai experiment, artificial intelligence thought experiment

Id: vYZRf4S9Dz8

Length: 20min 47sec (1247 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 02 2018