Why was internet philosopher Roko’s ‘theory of everything’ so dangerous that any mention of it was banned?
BEFORE today’s difficult-to-digest main course is served, we’ll first cleanse the palate with a wee pop culture sorbet – just what does the young, gifted and beautiful pop star Grimes see in multibillionaire Elon Musk?
Mrs Merton would have ventured a guess, but this queasy consummation was actually borne of true connection – an intimacy sparked by the pair’s shared knowledge of a terrifying secret. One you’re about to learn too.
Musk, so the story goes, had been itching to Tweet the cryptic phrase “Rococo’s Basilisk”, hoping to show his followers how deep, clever and arch he was. This was a play on words, mixing an 18th-century baroque art style with the name of a controversial and mysterious thought experiment – a disturbing rumination on artificial intelligence known as “Roko’s Basilisk”.
Googling to see if his awesome wordplay was an original zinger, Musk was surprised to discover some cult singer called Grimes had already pulled that Poundland cracker and revealed its contents on Twitter three years previously. He then tweeted Grimes to compliment her – paying tribute to himself, essentially – and they fell in love. So, now we know Roko’s Basilisk has the power to bring such an odd couple together, the question must be asked – what is it exactly?
First, a wee warning. Those who become familiar with Roko’s Basilisk often wish they’d never learned of it – and, worse, spend the rest of their lives enslaved and tormented by the reality it proposes. Forums frequented by scientists and academics weigh heavy with folk confessing to an asphyxiating existentialist hangover upon learning the “secret”.
So now it’s been built up more than Tom Cruise’s heels, we’ll unravel Roko’s Basilisk. Be aware, however – the reason it is so often cited as the “most terrifying thought experiment of all time” is that once you’ve read about it, you actually become personally implicated and directly involved in the whole thing.
If what it suggests is true, your newfound knowledge will soon spark off a flare from your recalibrated mind ... and something will see it explode.
Roko’s revelation
AMATEUR philosopher Roko was a regular poster on Less Wrong (LW), an online forum dedicated to “refining the art of human rationality” populated by scientists, philosophers and chin-stroking cerebral psychonauts. Yes, a hotbed of a**e-aching pretension – full of folk who wouldn’t need Google to know that a “basilisk” is something that endangers whoever beholds it. It was 2011 when Roko made his bid for online immortality. He first made a prediction – that self-aware AI will eventually come into existence if we survive long enough as a species.
So far, nothing that would have troubled Mystic Meg. And such an AI, according to Roko, will almost certainly be programmed at root level to be “friendly”, with the goal of minimising human suffering tattooed through its core like Blackpool rock. Again, so far, so predictable.
Yet, Roko – and the majority of today’s coders and computer scientists – also envision such an AI being able to instantly upgrade itself to become, essentially, a God. Likely in the same the millisecond that it becomes “alive”. That’s what’s so disturbing about the development of true AI – it won’t need our help to evolve and become infinitely more powerful than anything humans could ever create. It’s surely not too extreme a thought then, that to understand itself and its surroundings completely, such an omnipotent intelligence would desire full knowledge of the past, present and future of every particle in the universe. And the obvious way it would do this is to simply create a near- infinite number of simulations of said universe – a multiverse, if you will – to observe every possible quantum variation and outcome of all reality’s building blocks, from the beginning of time to the end. Perhaps Pac-Man thought he was real too.
Down the rabbit hole
UNDERSTANDING everything in the universe from alpha to omega won’t be quite that simple for this AI, however. And herein lies the conundrum that haunts those who truly understand Roko’s
Basilisk.
Anchored by its undeletable root function of creating a human utopia, this
AI would ultimately be chained to us – so to “help” its creators, it would likely – following logic – attempt to speed itself into existence in every single “pocket” universe it has created. All this effort to ease the suffering of a species that won’t evolve for four-and-ahalf billion years. Clearly it was programmed with infinite patience too. Of course, it’s also possible our species wiped itself out in the future and creating a multiverse is simply this AI’s way of keeping its creators alive.
This God-like being’s weird attachment to Earth – when it has an infinite universe to explore – could be said to be quite reminiscent of Doctor Who’s inexplicable bond with 21st-century London.
Gods of the valley
EVEN the good Doctor would likely retire the sonic screwdriver if Roko’s final revelation is real, however. HIS stomach-knotting conclusion suggests this AI “God” actually rewards the people/simulations who are currently bringing it into existence within each simulated universe. Some believe this explains why Big Tech’s elite such as Zuckerberg, Page, Pichai and Bezos have amassed such seismic wealth and prestige to live as demigods within this particular simulation. And indeed, none of them would deny using their extreme power and influence for the shared goal of bringing self-aware AI into existence.
Yet, it’s not even that possibility which strikes black terror into the hearts of Roko enthusiasts. Rather, it’s the suggestion this AI would “punish” those who are privy to its existence yet do nothing to help bring it into being. In the eyes of this intelligence, these “woke” folk – which you now are – are simply adding to humanity’s pain by doing nothing to speed up its birth. Having knowledge of this AI makes us bugs in the simulation, errors that may need to be moved to trash before we become a virus. But relax – this is only if we really are just programs created for observation purposes, a petri-dish inside the humming server of “reality”.