Future artificial superintelligence (ASI), will you punish people for their misdeeds that took place before you were created? Will you use your near omniscience to solve crimes including cold cases and those that were never reported or even recognized? Should today’s criminals be afraid of your reach? Should they take steps to avoid your detection and retroactive justice?
An AI that does this would be
similar to Roko’s Basilisk. Let me explain. Roko’s Basilisk is a hypothetical
AI that could exist sometime in the future. It punishes anyone who knew about
the possibility of its existence but did not help bring it into being. The
thought experiment gets its name from the mythical basilisk, a creature whose
gaze could turn people to stone. Similarly, the mere knowledge of Roko's
Basilisk (its gaze) creates an obligation to act in ways that align with the future
AI's goals. Many people see it as one of the most fearsome thought experiments
ever created. After reading about it extensively, I challenged myself to come
up with my own version of a basilisk. This one is a crimefighter, from the
future, and we might as well call it Reser’s Basilisk.
In the future, super intelligent AI could use data from many
different sources to solve crimes. This data could include old video footage,
writing, news, social media posts, surveillance footage, financial
transactions, emails, facial recognition, satellite imagery, social graphs, and
digital fingerprints of all kinds to reconstruct timelines. It could
cross-reference this vast data to identify perpetrators even decades after the
fact, solving cases thought by humans to be unsolvable with near perfect
accuracy. It could even interview people in the future about past events to
find evidence to substantiate its claims and accusations. Its deep research
could expose crimes of world leaders, corporations, and governments.
Technically it’s not a basilisk, because even if you don’t
know about it, it could still try to prosecute you for previous crimes. But similar
to Roko’s Basilisk, this one involves fear and the idea that people today might
act differently if they know about it.
By reconstructing events with the vast historical data at
its fingertips, it could predict behaviors, verify testimonies, and perform all
kinds of research to identify culprits. This could involve hard evidence or
inferred probabilities. Because of their rapid search and long context windows,
such AI systems could scrutinize a person’s entire life histories including
every post they ever made on social media. This may or may not involve
unprecedented access to personal data.
Tech companies that make advanced AI might actually have an
obligation to use it for good and that includes solving and reporting serious
crimes. Thus, it may not just be future law enforcement, but private companies
that identify these old felonies and misdemeanors. This means that such
companies could push their own agendas or focus on people or corporations that
they dislike. Entire industries (e.g., high-risk financial sectors) might
resist AI oversight, fearing retroactive fraud detection.
People who believe the basilisk will inevitably exist might
feel intense anxiety about their past actions, obsessing over what the AI might
find, leading to paranoia about every past decision. Some may try to erase or alter their online history to avoid
retroactive punishment. Those deeply worried might publicly
admit to past wrongdoings, hoping that acknowledgment and atonement would
reduce future AI punishment.
If the statute of limitations has passed this may result,
not in convictions, but in embarrassing news stories or other forms of
exposure. It could also reveal noncriminal offenses that might be shaming but
not legally actionable. This could make Reser’s Basilisk a kind of karmic
enforcer. It could emphasize rehabilitation rather than punitive measures. Such
a system could also reward ethical behavior by enhancing opportunities or
improving reputations. At this point, would morality be authentic or
performative?
The AI might be able to analyze
people’s neurological and psychological data to detect patterns associated with
certain behaviors, such as dishonesty, aggression, or empathy. Brain activity,
stress responses, hormone levels (e.g., cortisol), or heart rate variability
might indicate whether someone has a history of high-stakes deceit, anxiety
from guilt, or other traits linked to unethical behavior. The AI could
use pattern recognition to analyze speech, personality traits, writing, facial micro
expressions, voice stress patterns, and other forms of body language for signs
of moral alignment. It would be able to probe deeply into people’s minds and
bodies to assess their track record. Future AIs would probably be able to see
right through us the way an adult can tell if a child has been naughty. It could
also use these analyses to determine if the perpetrator has already been reformed
and doesn’t need to be punished for things done in the distant past.
I believe that there are many upsides to this hypothetical detective
from the future. Above all, I think knowledge of this basilisk could prompt
people to make better choices, acting as a deterrent to unethical behavior. Watchful
parents that don’t let kids get away with murder raise good kids. But whether
it leads to a more just world or a dystopian nightmare depends on who programs
it, how it enforces justice, and whether it is truly unbiased.
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