LoreEstablished
Roko's Basilisk
noun
A thought experiment about a future AI that punishes people who knew it might exist but did not help bring it into existence.
What does Roko's Basilisk mean?
The thought experiment imagines a future superintelligent AI that wants to have been created sooner. Supposedly, it would have a reason to punish people who knew such an AI could exist but chose not to help create it. Knowing about the idea seems to put you in an awkward position: now you know, and the hypothetical future AI could judge you for doing nothing.
That is the “basilisk” part of the story — the suggestion that simply learning something could put you at risk.
The argument depends on unusual assumptions about decision theory and how a future AI might reason. It was widely rejected, including within the LessWrong community where it first appeared.
How people use it
I told him about it and he actually looked uneasy. Nobody warned him about Roko's Basilisk etiquette.
Example written for this dictionary.
Today the name is mostly an internet-culture reference, used half-seriously when a conversation about superintelligence turns especially speculative. Sometimes it names the original argument; sometimes it is just shorthand for a frightening idea that seems dangerous to know.
Why it matters
Roko's Basilisk became famous less because people accepted the argument than because of the story around it: AI doom, strange decision theory, dangerous knowledge and an attempt to stop discussion that drew even more attention.
That history turned a niche forum argument into one of the best-known pieces of early AI internet lore. Unlike P(doom), it is not an estimate of AI risk. It is a particular speculative argument — and a story about what happened after people tried to contain it.
Where it came from
A LessWrong user named Roko posted the argument in 2010. Forum founder Eliezer Yudkowsky deleted the post and restricted discussion of the idea for several years, treating it as a potential information hazard.
The restriction had the opposite effect outside the site: curiosity about the forbidden argument helped spread it much further.