Could AI and Deepfakes Sway the US Election?

Leah Feiger: All right, that’s a good one. Thank you, Tori. Will, what do you have for us?

Will Knight: Wow, I don’t know if I can really compete with RFK, but as a good CIA operative, I’m going to promote something from the weirder corners of AI, AI and philosophy, I guess. So there’s this thing called Roko’s basilisk. So the basilisk is a mythological creature serpent that if you looked in its eyes, it could kill you. And so there was this thought experiment someone posted on an AI forum saying that superintelligence in the future would be incentivized to create a simulation in which maybe we all exist inside it, and it would be incentivized to torture anybody who worked against or even thought about the idea of working against it coming into being. So at one point in one of these …

Leah Feiger: Incredible.

Will Knight: … forums, they banned talk of Roko’s, this thought experiment, Roko’s basilisk. The idea was that if you even thought about it, it could be dangerous, which is particularly bananas.

Leah Feiger: That is so funny. What forums is this proliferating on, or not proliferating on?

Will Knight: This was on LessWrong, which is a very famous forum dedicated to AI risks and alignment and—

Leah Feiger: How often do you personally think about Roko’s basilisk?

Will Knight: Well, I actually only discovered it recently, and I try not to think about it just in case. It’s like Pascal’s wager, isn’t it? It’s just sort of playing the odds that superintelligence will come into being, so you have to try and make it come into being. Yeah, it’s completely mad.

Leah Feiger: Oh, that’s a very good one. OK. Oh, actually, this is a little bit hard this week, but I got to go with Tori. CIA assets, here we go.

Vittoria Elliott: Finally. Did the Ravens put me over the edge? I must know.

Leah Feiger: The Ravens did put you over the edge. I liked it, and it was part of, I just saw how much you were working for this, and yeah, it was an A for effort and an A for execution. Good stuff.

Vittoria Elliott: Thank you.

Leah Feiger: And partially, I can’t give the win to something that I’m not allowed to think about ever again. Tori and Will, thank you so much for joining us. You were excellent guests.

Vittoria Elliott: Thanks, Leah.

Will Knight: Thanks for having me.

Leah Feiger: Thanks for listening to WIRED Politics Lab. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow the show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. We also have a newsletter, which Makena Kelly writes each week. The link to the newsletter and the WIRED reporting we mentioned today are in the show notes. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please, please write to politicslab@WIRED.com. That’s politicslab@WIRED.com. We’re so excited to hear from you. WIRED Politics Lab is produced by Jake Harper. Pran Bandi is our studio engineer. Amar Lal mixed this episode. Stephanie Kariuki is our executive producer. Chris Bannon is global head of audio at Condé Nast, and I’m your host, Leah Feiger. We’ll be back in your feeds with a new episode next week.