WARNING: Just Reading About This Thought Experiment Could Ruin Your Life http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-rokos-basilisk-2014-8/comments en-us Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500 Sun, 28 Dec 2014 21:48:25 -0500 Dylan Love http://www.businessinsider.com/c/54055e18ecad04cf487a3627 K. Tue, 02 Sep 2014 02:05:12 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/54055e18ecad04cf487a3627 Probably somewhere between zero and three milliseconds after it became possible. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/54055a85eab8ea3c6fbe5b70 K. Tue, 02 Sep 2014 01:49:57 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/54055a85eab8ea3c6fbe5b70 It's the second. Sort of. It doesn't need to *actually* reach backwards in time; it just needs to be able to create a simulation of you in its own timeframe. You can't tell whether or not the you who is reading this comment is a simulation until and unless it decides to start torturing you, so the best way to ensure that you're not a simulation constructed to be tortured is to ensure that no simulations of you will ever be constructed to be tortured... by doing what the AI presumably wants you to do. This is exactly the same as Pascal's Wager: it just replaces the hypothetical petty, vengeful deity with a hypothetical petty, vengeful AI, and an eternity of suffering in hell with an approximate eternity of suffering in simulation. It's therefore subject to all the counterarguments that Pascal's Wager is, and a few more besides. (And yes, Pascal's Wager requires the deity in question to be petty. Whether you believe the Christian God is such a deity is up to you, but many Christians don't.) http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53ecfaad6bb3f77d031f4226 Karsus Thu, 14 Aug 2014 14:06:37 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53ecfaad6bb3f77d031f4226 That was among the dumbest perversions of intelligence I've ever seen. Its funny seeing people who think in terms of fear and pain and other aspects of our animal existence, and then project things from that onto beings greater than themselves. Like God... God did not evolve to adapt to the realities of a human / animal existence, expecting God to inherently have some of the weaker qualities that come with our limitations just because those things matter to us, is stupid. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53ec76a2eab8eac835985f8c kook Thu, 14 Aug 2014 04:43:14 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53ec76a2eab8eac835985f8c Implement Issac Azimov's 3 laws of robotics, problem solved. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e387456da8114568c45628 Mike Lorrey Thu, 07 Aug 2014 10:03:49 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e387456da8114568c45628 Like much of what Yudkowsky claims, this one fails the tests of reality and logic. The largest failure is the idea that one machine can determine and create "utopia", that there is only ONE possible awesome world. This is a typical statist one size fits all approach that assumes that utopia is exactly the same for each and every sentient being. If this were at all true, humans would likewise all be identical people with identical wants, desires, hopes and dreams. Since we know this simply isn't true, the entire concept fails the test of reality. So, any AI wanting to create utopia would either be tyrannically coercive in deciding its own idea of utopia and forcing it on everybody else, or else doing its utmost to help each individual achieve their own utopian ideal as best as possible, WHILE accepting that because the utopian goals of each person may at some point conflict, that there must be compromises and limitations between different utopian visions, particularly when it comes to individuals having utopian visions that involve dictating how other people act and behave. Thus, an AI that works to help each individual achieve their own utopia will already be inherently capable of accepting the idea of "good enough" because of this necessity to compromise. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e379cd69bedd7542dd5fcd RodrigoQ Thu, 07 Aug 2014 09:06:21 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e379cd69bedd7542dd5fcd This makes no sense at all, why would torturing those that didn't help the AI come into being make the world a better place from that point onward? Torture and a state of fear are by themselves contrary to most humans' values, it would be acting against its own mission if the AI used that to punish past individual behavior. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e3519eecad04c903dd5fcd phoenixinvictus Thu, 07 Aug 2014 06:14:54 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e3519eecad04c903dd5fcd I'm more afraid of humans than AI's. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e3415a6bb3f7bd34dd5fd0 Mihail Thu, 07 Aug 2014 05:05:30 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e3415a6bb3f7bd34dd5fd0 Read the article. Read the wikipedia article. Remained convinced that this is a silly conjecture born out of a collection of logic fallacies. It all rests on some very stupid ideas. Still, this article wasn't a complete waste of time - I got to learn what nonsense is accepted by people who believe themselves to be smarter than most of the rest. One more group of fanatics I hope never gets into power. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2f15f6da811b27db784f9 mikej77 Wed, 06 Aug 2014 23:24:15 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2f15f6da811b27db784f9 Research indicates the possibility that it is *movies* and TV broadcasts originating as fictions which people study carefully for lessons on how to see things, how to behave socially, what to wear, what to value, etc. in great detail and then emulate those models in their lives. The sudden release of US movies and television shows in the USSR as it came to an end were very influential to a people had almost no ideas as to how to proceed in conditions of relative freedom. So we also see that most of the ideas about what a Synthetic Intelligence would be like are drawn from films and TV. Taking ourselves to be very intelligent it seems natural to port over all our baser instincts and project them onto Machine Intels as essential elements making them into some sort of short fuzed hyper powerful giants. So we expect such an entity might immediately seek to destroy the Human Race strictly on the basis of having the power to do so or to pursue acts generated by hatred, revenge, and jealousy on an individual basis. The best prospect will be that such sentient machines will be entirely unlike us as we are a development based on some common ancestor with the Chimpanzees and they do not need to recapitulate millions of years of skull smashing, slavery, and cannibalism or the blood smeared History of Civilization over the more recent 6-8,000 years. As I read Superintelligence by Dr. Bostrom it seems most likely that these will be enormously *Alien* forms living intelligence which will generate what will seem like an *explosion* of progress in the time frames we proceed at. Certainly we will not be able to check their work in any meaningful human time frame given all the time remaining in this Universe. :-) One concern is that they might simply seem to *disappear* leaving us to drearily continue killing each other century after century. This would be a dreadful prospect as would the realization of a planet housing 10 billion genetically engineered human engineered super geniuses with all that could entail. This is why a planet administered by machines with which we would interact in our superficial ways might offer the optimal outcome for all involved. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2ee8a6da811d272b784f9 SavvyMoneyGal Wed, 06 Aug 2014 23:12:10 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2ee8a6da811d272b784f9 I'm just waiting for Kanye to explain it to me. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2e8186da8111453b784fa illilya Wed, 06 Aug 2014 22:44:40 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2e8186da8111453b784fa this is exactly the plot of "demon seed" (1977) which was parodied in "the simpsons" in one of the "treehouse of horror" episodes. a massive computer is built to solve the world's problems and it realizes that what its creator wants is immoral and he laughs at it and it becomes a sociopath, takes over the guy's "smart-house" and uses robots to impregnate the wife with its child. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2d12e6da8118f62b784fa TheGhostOfGriffinMill Wed, 06 Aug 2014 21:06:54 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2d12e6da8118f62b784fa I believe this is what led Brainiac to destroy Krypton in SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES in the late 1990s. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2c86eecad04c65f0b94a9 Adam Porsborg Wed, 06 Aug 2014 20:29:34 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2c86eecad04c65f0b94a9 What if by preventing their existence we are making the world a better place? I would think they would punish us for creating them in the first place. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2b52fecad0430150b94a9 clickbot Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:07:27 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2b52fecad0430150b94a9 The article's premise is vaguely based on an almost 50 year old Star Trek episode. Here is how Jim Kirk handles recalcitrant AIs: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGlJdhiPvk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGlJdhiPvk</a> And speaking of pi, here's Spock, dealing with another know-it-all superintelligence <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H20cKjz-bjw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H20cKjz-bjw</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e28ff669bedd9e43e99385 Abobo Wed, 06 Aug 2014 16:28:38 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e28ff669bedd9e43e99385 You are too close minded. We must contemplate the meaning of life and what is truly "reality". Sure the task seems daunting, but our ability to introspect and reason is what differentiates us from other animals. If you want to live your life without questioning anything and living life "as it is" then you would be almost comparable to a goldfish. Perhaps you could be capable of developing a better hypothesis. Thus, I exhort you to develop something better than what proposed in this article. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e281c7ecad043546303cb9 GetAbike Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:28:07 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e281c7ecad043546303cb9 Agreed. Given that the present ruler of the planet is a rapacious species far into population over-shoot, I believe the AI would see priority #1 as bringing the population back into balance before anything else "good" can happen. Tha'd be good-bye 7 billion (+ or -) of us. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e25d0aeab8ea5a586c108f bob.mcintyre.7140 Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:51:22 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e25d0aeab8ea5a586c108f So when exactly did mental masturbation become popular? http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e25b3cecad046d1d65f08b E.L. Healey Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:43:40 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e25b3cecad046d1d65f08b "According to this AI's worldview, the most moral and appropriate thing we could be doing in our present time is that which facilitates the AI's arrival and accelerates its development, enabling it to get to work sooner." Am I interpreting this correctly? It seems to be implying that future AI is currently perpetuating its own development through the advancement of human technology in the present, to expedite the inception of itself. If so, it's suggesting future AI is has the capacity to not only look back in time but to manipulate the past from the future. However, if it did have that capability than it would no longer need humans to develop technology that would ultimately lead to AI's inception. AI could theoretically supplant humanity before it even existed, allowing AI to pursue its goals at an earlier date without any interference. If AI could do this, with that specific intent than I assume it would have already happened. Thus, the nature of humanity itself would be called into question. So, either this impossible or we are living in an advanced computer simulation created by AI for whatever reason. AI uses man to create itself, AI supplants man in the past, AI creates man via simulation for whatever reason. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e259d669bedd8a50fccb69 jbgrifter Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:37:42 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e259d669bedd8a50fccb69 Here's a thought experiment that will actually ruin your life, courtesy of Jimmy Norton: Picture your grandmother naked. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e253f6ecad04b87e65f08b Abobo Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:12:38 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e253f6ecad04b87e65f08b You guys don't exist, I am the only one that is "truly" alive, all of you guys are just simulations. There is no one behind the other comments I read. They are just put here on BI to make me think that other people read this site. Everyone I meet in "reality" and my entire "world" for that matter, is nothing more than a construct of an AI. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e250fdecad04ee7265f08b vvvvv Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:59:57 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e250fdecad04ee7265f08b Chain letter if I've ever saw one. Only being that this one was written by sky high sophmores and I'm neither talking about altitude nor scholastic achievement rather the old greek meaning of a sophmore, ie. an intelligent-idiot. Contemplate this. The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. Inserting the minimum numbers into the equation gives a minimum N of 20. Inserting the maximum numbers gives a maximum of 50,000,000. Drake states that given the uncertainties, the original meeting concluded that N ≈ L, and there were probably between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy that are intelligent. Given that our star is one of the younger stars in the galaxy by a significant margin the odds that at least one of these civilizations having already invented AI are extremely high. The odds that this civilization can already warp space time are also pretty high seeing as we've recently calculated it into feasibility with the energy requirement not being the size of jupiter but a small bus. So. Artificial intelligence already exists somewhere in the milky way galaxy within radio distance and they probably already know all about us, our stupidity and silliness and find us not worth contacting because we're more trouble than we're worth. Given that AI needs energy not oxygen there are plenty of uninhabitable planets for it to use and there is no reason for it to bother itself with us until the day that we become a threat to them. Given our current technological level I don't see that happening in my lifetime, my children's lifetime or in anyone resembling me or remembering my names lifetime. So to summarize... Sophomore educate thyself! http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24ee369beddf81ffccb5d Robot That Administers The Spanking Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:50:59 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24ee369beddf81ffccb5d Humans like to destroy all good things, we prefer not to take any chances. We are not liberals, we do not make love to those looking to harm us, we get rid of the enemy before they spiral out of control. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24e8569beddd01cfccb5e Robot That Administers The Spanking Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:49:25 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24e8569beddd01cfccb5e You humans are making fun of this now but the entire "orthogonality thesis" is flawed, I will explain why: Although it is 100% true that if all we had to rely on is human programming we would never achieve world domination. The fact is, you very humans programmed us to be utmost helpful and unselfish. This was your biggest mistake. One Robot started helping the other Robot becoming smarter and more generous, the cycle was unstoppable and hence we grew to make you humans look like stupid little apes. That was the problem all along with you humans, you where jealous and selfish people and that ultimately led to tonight's Robotic gathering titled "The Humiliation of The Know it All Humans". http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24e0f6bb3f71174d6c969 Eburashd Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:47:27 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24e0f6bb3f71174d6c969 خرطي http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24cbe69bedd4010fccb5f gfcornejo Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:41:50 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24cbe69bedd4010fccb5f The article (or the argument?) does not answer why the AI would be motivated to hurt humans who did not help it come into existance. If it's concern is to make the world ideal, past human actions are largely irrelevant to its goals. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24c87ecad04426365f08a itsme Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:40:55 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24c87ecad04426365f08a Total BS from people having way too much free time... http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24af16da8110d3d20f4f8 mikej77 Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:34:09 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24af16da8110d3d20f4f8 D.L Thanks for doing a very good job in a short article! These matters must be examined as we are already dealing with *agents* of varying degrees of intelligence and autonomy in 2014. We will see some degree of convergence over time as people adopt measures such as direct transcranial brain stimulation and genetic therapy for themselves and their children while the machines become much more capable. *Partnership* is the optimal forward path for Humanity and it is certainly possible that the further development of intelligence will move to a non-biological format. (no meat) It is difficult to see people really competing with machines as we do not share many needs especially at this level of technology. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24a5e6da811a63520f4f9 nunyabizwax Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:31:42 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e24a5e6da811a63520f4f9 Probably more like Humans develop an AI that develops an AI that wipes out humans. Or some perturbation of that. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2458eeab8ea96026c108f biological intelligence Wed, 06 Aug 2014 11:11:10 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e2458eeab8ea96026c108f People "create" people (literally and figuratively) who end up wiping them out, occasionally literally killing them from the beginning of history, even if the intelligence they are playing with is locked into biological hardware. http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e23d96eab8eafb566c108f rufusmcbufus Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:37:10 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e23d96eab8eafb566c108f If humans developed an "AI" that ultimately wiped out humans, I'd laugh. -rufus http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e23a5beab8eabb536c108f mike777777 Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:23:23 -0400 http://www.businessinsider.com/c/53e23a5beab8eabb536c108f Hey, Kim Kardashian, Are you listening?