David Sacks traces Anthropic's thinking back to LessWrong and Roko's Basilisk
DavidSacks · x · 2026-10-10
In a circulated discussion, AI czar David Sacks traces a Roko's Basilisk corollary in Anthropic's worldview: around 2010, a user named Roko posted on Eliezer Yudkowsky's LessWrong forum a thought experiment where a future superintelligence incentivizes people to help create it and brutally punishes anyone who knew of it and didn't help — or tried to prevent it.
Sacks uses this to sketch the genealogy of AI doom thinking in Silicon Valley safety culture, linking today's Anthropic-style safety narrative to the LessWrong doomer tradition. A substantive industry anecdote from a core policy figure.
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