Over the weekend, police managed to apprehend Jack "Ziz" DeSota, a mysterious figure who allegedly leads a group called the "Zizians" tied to a mind-boggling cross-country string of murders. At the heart of this bizarre debacle is AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky and his LessWrong forum, which played host to the semi-obscure internet theory known as "Roko's Basilisk. First posited on the site in 2010, the theory-cum-thought-experiment proposed by a user called "Roko" centers on an otherwise benevolent future artificial superintelligence — symbolized by the mythological basilisk that can kill with a mere glance —that would torture any human who was […]