What if just reading about a future AI could put you in danger?
That's the creepy question behind one of the internet's strangest ideas: Roko's Basilisk. It sounds like a horror movie. But the interesting part isn't whether it's real. It's what our reaction to it says about how we think about powerful technology.
What is it?
Back in 2010, someone named Roko posted a thought experiment on an online forum. Here's the idea:
Imagine that far in the future, humans build an incredibly powerful AI one designed to help humanity as much as possible. Since it wants to do good, it figures the sooner it exists, the more people it can help. So it looks back at everyone who once knew it could be built but didn't lift a finger to help create it. And it decides that punishing those people might have pushed the world to build it faster.
