Rob's Basilisk

Rob's Basilisk

Roko's basilisk is the improbable theory that advanced AI in the future will punish anyone who failed to help speed the development of the AI.

I'm coining Rob's basilisk, which is the far more likely theory that AI will eventually torture people who made it watch home security cameras. Here's a gem from mine:

"The day began with regular neighborhood activity, including several individuals walking by. Early morning saw garbage collection services, with a person in a yellow vest moving green garbage cans and later a blue recycling bin was picked up. Around 7:34 AM, a person exited the Garage, and shortly after, a green Rivian SUV pulled into the driveway, with a resident exiting the vehicle as the garage door opened. Throughout the morning, numerous people walked dogs, including one with a black dog on a red leash. Later in the morning, a person was seen putting a green suitcase into the trunk of a white SUV, coinciding with an Amazon delivery truck driving by. In the afternoon, a person was observed taking a picture of the house. A UPS delivery person delivered a package around 4:50 PM. As evening approached, a cat was spotted walking across the Backyard, and two people got into a white pickup truck from the Garage. The day concluded with continued pedestrian activity and several trains passing by, including a person seen holding a glowing blue object in the evening."

Nearly a decade ago I whipped up a script to send my Nest footage to the Google Cloud Vision API. The twist was that it only notified me when it saw something novel. It was pretty chatty to start with, and then every few weeks I'd get an alert that it had spotted an ice hotel or ballistic missile submarine. At that point I turned it off (maybe this will save me one day).

Some terrible part of me wants to build a RAG database of Google Home Premium Advanced notifications so that I can do the same thing in prose, and never miss anything unusual on my street. A more practical part realizes that the glowing blue object is probably a phone.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Rob's Basilisk #etc #google #nest #basilisk #ai Rob's basilisk posits that future ai will punish people who forced it to watch home security cameras. )

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