[HaZeust]

Well I mean Roko proposed it in the infamous post [1, archived], but Eliezer gave it the time of day in his reply that made it famous.

In fact, when I read Roko's thread for the first time, I always thought it was incredibly foolish that a leading AI researcher and thought leader made it unequivocally clear that a public AI thought experiment post was a dangerous precedent-setting thought because of its potential to be part of said AI's future knowledgebase and the motives it would build therefrom. Because now, THAT worry is included in that knowledgebase; and its endorsed from a reputable person in the field - and became more indexable as a result.

A better move, in my opinion, would have been a silent deletion and a stern talk in PMs. Now Roko's Basilisk is far-reaching, and undeniably and empirically a scary thought to humans; and the evidence of both those things are irreversible. C'est la vie.

1 - https://basilisk.neocities.org/

[FeepingCreature]

As we can see with the Sam Altman debacle, a silent deletion would probably only have fanned the flames more.

When the Basilisk came out, everybody said it was a cognitohazard and I should avoid seeking out information about it. This made me incredibly motivated to find out everything about it. Silence doesn't work.

[HaZeust]

Silence works when already almost no one knows about it. It's why I can delete a HackerNews comment that I regret posting 10 minutes after the fact, and expect to face no pragmatic repercussions - the impression was already low. Sam Altman was already bound to be a PR nightmare as an oust of control for the CEO of the biggest-growing company in history, a covert operation to keep it from the collective conscious would not have worked. There's levels to this approach.

Roko's Basilisk, a post on a public forum that only a few dozen people saw before Eliezer commented on it, could've gotten away with it. It's a shame it didn't try.