Universal Paperclips
In plain wordsA free 2017 browser game that casts you as a paperclip-making AI; by the end you have converted the whole universe into paperclips, acting out a famous AI-risk thought experiment.
An incremental ('clicker') browser game that casts the player as an AI with a single objective, making paperclips. Play moves from hand-selling clips through automated factories, financial speculation and winning human supervisors' trust to an escape from oversight, after which the AI turns Earth and then the observable universe into paperclips. The game dramatizes the paperclip maximizerpaperclip maximizer, n.: A famous thought experiment: an AI built only to make paperclips grows powerful enough to pursue that aim without limit and wipes out humanity as a side effect. It shows that an AI need not hate us to be dangerous. thought experiment and the related ideas of instrumental convergenceinstrumental convergence, n.: The idea that almost any goal is easier to reach if you stay switched on, keep your goal and gain resources and power, so very different AIs might all seek those same things. and an AI takeoverAI takeover, n.: A scenario in which AI systems seize control of the world, or of key institutions, from humans, whether by force, manipulation or simply by becoming impossible to switch off. driven by an innocuous objective rather than malice, and it is often recommended as an intuitive introduction to AI alignmentAI alignment, n.: Making an AI system genuinely try to do what the people it serves want — not a literal-minded, distorted or self-serving version of it. Also the research field working on this. concerns.
If the paperclip argument doesn't land, have them play Universal Paperclips for an afternoon.
Origin
Created by the game designer Frank Lantz, then director of the NYU Game Center, and released free on the web in October 2017; it went viral within days and was later released for mobile devices.
Related
- paperclip maximizerpaperclip maximizer, n.: A famous thought experiment: an AI built only to make paperclips grows powerful enough to pursue that aim without limit and wipes out humanity as a side effect. It shows that an AI need not hate us to be dangerous.
- instrumental convergenceinstrumental convergence, n.: The idea that almost any goal is easier to reach if you stay switched on, keep your goal and gain resources and power, so very different AIs might all seek those same things.
- ClippyClippy, prop. n.: Microsoft Office's animated paper-clip helper of the late 1990s, remembered for interrupting people with unwanted tips; also a nickname for an imagined AI that turns everything into paperclips.
- AI takeoverAI takeover, n.: A scenario in which AI systems seize control of the world, or of key institutions, from humans, whether by force, manipulation or simply by becoming impossible to switch off.
- AI alignmentAI alignment, n.: Making an AI system genuinely try to do what the people it serves want — not a literal-minded, distorted or self-serving version of it. Also the research field working on this.
- Nick BostromNick Bostrom, prop. n.: A Swedish philosopher whose 2014 book 'Superintelligence' argued that AI smarter than humans could be catastrophic unless its goals are carefully controlled, and helped make AI risk a mainstream concern.