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Will Quantum Computing Help Bring Roko’s Basilisk to Life?
And is there anything we can do to prepare for it?
This analogy is a bit of a stretch, so I’ll lay out some ground work. Be warned, if you believe that knowledge in itself is dangerous, you might want to skip the first section, and just know that some guy Roko pissed some people off online
Who is Roko? And Why Does He Have a Pet Basilisk?
A forum post in 2010 by a user Roko argued that a superintelligent AI would punish those who tried to stop it from coming into existence.
So a post-singularity world may be a world of fun and plenty for the people who are currently ignoring the problem, whilst being a living hell for a significant fraction of current existential risk reducers (say, the least generous half).
The people who are trying to stop the SIAI (super intelligent AI) from existing are are the “existential risk reducers.”
To put this in more plain terms, imagine if you were working with a peer and treated them poorly, maybe because they were incompetent or maybe because you’re not a nice person (hey, no judgments in this hypothetical).
You do your best to sabotage this person’s promotion, giving them horrible peer feedback reviews and doing everything you…
