Is AI the Paperclip?

You’ve heard of Nick Bostrom’s paperclip maximizer? A super-intelligent AI is tasked with making paperclips and, in single-minded pursuit of that goal, converts all available resources — including humanity — into paperclips.

Nicholas Carr puts a spin on that thought experiment and concludes we’re already living in that reality — except it’s us who have become the maximalizers.

Bostrom’s story, I would argue, becomes compelling when viewed not as a thought experiment but as a fable. It’s not really about AIs making paperclips. It’s about people making AIs. Look around. Are we not madly harvesting the world’s resources in a monomaniacal attempt to optimize artificial intelligence? Are we not trapped in an “AI maximizer” scenario?

Oh.

Elon Musk, having abandoned his earlier misgivings about AI, announced last week that he was merging xAI into SpaceX. The combined companies were “scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” he declared. “In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.” It’s exactly what Bostrom predicted. The monomaniacs will not stop with the resources of the Earth. They’ll extend their plundering to the heavens. Everything is raw material.

We have met the enemy and he is us.