Artificial superintelligence (ASI) here means any artificial intelligence able to carry out any cognitive task better than 100% of the unenhanced biological human population.
Torture here means intentionally inflicting involuntary extreme suffering, unignorable to the victim, for more than 10% of a period longer than 1 minute. This is counterfactual to the perpetrator existing but taking no action, so it must be new suffering created, inaction and trade-offs for the unambiguous greater good don't count e.g. making someone upset by not being their best friend. In addition to unconditional torture, this includes punishment, such as for crimes, or for refusing orders.
In addition, I mean the ASI independently and unilaterally deciding to do it, not being ordered by humans.
Human-level-intelligence here means any conscious mind with equal or greater hedonic valence than the bottom 1% of the unenhanced biological human population. In addition to biological humans, this includes other AIs, human brain emulations, posthuman species, enhanced non-human animals, and extraterrestrial aliens.
1,000
1.00@EstMtz thanks :)
It could both be physical (e.g. being forcibly subjected to a nauseatingly foul stench on the milder end, to being dissolved in acid on the more extreme end) or psychological (e.g. being forced to listen to historical gruesome atrocities described in detail on the milder end, to implanting false memories of you torturing your family to death and convincing you that you really did it on the more extreme end).
The victim wouldn't necessarily have to be physically trapped, they could be followed around (see figure 1), or the torturous effect might become part of them in the case of body alteration or information known.
@TheAllMemeingEye Being followed would be horrible... I've had dreams of being stalked by flying drones and being trapped in buildings. Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode
@EstMtz yeah I hope it goes without saying that I desperately hope it doesn't ever happen, and I made this question partly to help calm my own worries
@singer Agreed - I am not positive from the prompt whether that counts (eg if a dictatorship creates ASI and uses it for torture/murder, does that count?)
@singer you're right, sorry, I should amend it to specify that I mean the ASI choosing to do so independently