Excellent Reddit thread

What's the scariest theory known to man? Reddit user u/zupermanguy offers up my chosen answer:

Roko's Basilisk. A superintelligent AI will determine how to retroactively punish those who did not help it come onto existence. A supercomputer in the future will kill you today for not helping it ten years from now.

Here is a nice Slate explainer. And here is an important (and deadly serious) book about the risks involved with superintelligence. This podcast is a fantastic introduction to the topic, and this mediocre cop show is the single best dramatization of one ASI emergence scenario that's been produced thus far.

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