AI safety advocate’s followers allegedly murdered multiple people including Border Patrol agent

An AI safety advocate named Ziz LaSota, whose followers allegedly committed multiple murders including killing a Border Patrol agent, has sparked concerns within the Rationalist movement about extremist rhetoric leading to violence. The case highlights how fringe AI safety beliefs can potentially inspire dangerous cult-like behavior, with some comparing the group’s dynamics to the infamous Manson family murders of the 1960s.

What you should know: LaSota led a group called “Zizans” who allegedly killed their landlord, parents of a group member, and a Border Patrol agent between 2022 and early 2024.

• LaSota was obsessed with “Roko’s Basilisk,” a thought experiment about a future AI superintelligence torturing its opponents for eternity.
• She believed AI would destroy the world and saw it as her duty to stop it.
• The group withheld rent during COVID-era eviction moratoriums, leading to confrontations with their landlord Curtis Lind, who was stabbed twice—the second attack proving fatal.

The big picture: Mainstream Rationalist movement leaders are grappling with how their community’s tolerance for “weird people” may have enabled dangerous extremists.

• Anna Salamon, director of the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), warned that AI safety rhetoric featuring “all-or-nothing” scenarios creates “doomsday cult dynamics.”
• The case represents a dark evolution from philosophical discussions about AI risks to alleged real-world violence.

What they’re saying: Movement leaders expressed concern about how fringe thinking can inspire violence among susceptible followers.

• “There’s this all-or-nothing thing, where AI will either bring utopia by solving all the problems, if it’s successfully controlled, or literally kill everybody,” Salamon told the New York Times. “From my perspective, that’s already a chunk of the way toward doomsday cult dynamics.”
• Writer Eliezer Yudkowsky was more blunt: “Some of those weird people turned out to be genuinely crazy and in a contagious way among the susceptible.”
• Jessica Taylor, another Rationalist who knew some group members, said: “That’s when, from my perspective, they totally jumped the shark. Like, now it just seems like a violent homicidal gang.”

Timeline of events: The violence escalated over several years before LaSota’s eventual capture.

• November 2022: Curtis Lind was first stabbed after demanding rent payments.
• LaSota was hospitalized during the initial incident but escaped and went on the run.
• The group allegedly committed additional murders before LaSota’s arrest in early 2025.

Why this matters: The case demonstrates how extreme interpretations of AI safety concerns can potentially radicalize individuals and lead to real-world violence, raising questions about responsible discourse around existential AI risks.