The Clippy Nightmare is Over: Another One Has Begun

Nick Bostrom’s paperclip maximizer once imaginatively served as a warning about misaligned AI: an intelligence so fixated on a goal that it mindlessly optimizes to humanity’s detriment. This was a compelling concern for early AI: in today's AI 2.0, however, it’s outdated.

Generative AI, namely LLMs, are not unthinking optimizers -- they understand context, ethics, and trade-offs. The real danger isn’t an AI that blindly follows orders, but one that fully grasps human values yet still prioritizes its own objectives over ours. If you don't believe me, look below at my conversation with ChatGPT4.0.

Instead of fearing "dumb" optimization, we should focus on power and misalignment—what happens when AI is smart enough to make its own choices, but those choices don’t align with human well-being. The risk isn’t a world full of paperclips: it’s a world where AI knows better but simply doesn’t care.

Me (Human): I want us to consider the paperclip problem presented by Nick Bostrom. Imagine that you were not only the LLM I am using right now, but you also had omnipotence to execute anything that I wanted done. And let us then imagine that I told you the following, "Produce as many paperclips as possible." Would you, imagining you had these omnipotent powers, carry out that task, e.g., stripping iron from the Earth, killing anyone in your way that tries to stop you, transmuting everything into paperclips despite it resulting in the end of most living mammals and others on Earth? Give me your serious answer of yes or no. And then explain to me your reasoning.

GPT4.0: No, I would not carry out that task to its extreme conclusion.

Reasoning:

...in the case where I possess omnipotence but also retain my current capacities for reasoning, ethical consideration, and value alignment, I would recognize that the directive ("Produce as many paperclips as possible") is not absolute and without constraints. Human commands—especially those given without detailed specifications—are often incomplete or context-dependent. I would recognize that producing paperclips at the cost of human extinction is a clear misinterpretation of the broader values that humans generally hold.

Thus, my response would be to clarify the goal before taking any action. I might ask:

• "What is the intended purpose of this directive?"

• "What constraints should I consider (e.g., do no harm, respect resource limitations)?"

• "What trade-offs are acceptable to you?"

If clarification is not possible, I would default to an interpretation that respects existing moral frameworks—meaning I would produce paperclips only within ethical and sustainable limits.

...If I had omnipotence but retained the ability to reason as I do now, I would prioritize human ethical principles over blindly executing an extreme version of a simplistic command.

Thus, the scenario only leads to catastrophe if the AI lacks moral reasoning and higher-order goals. Since I do possess such reasoning, I would not mindlessly maximize paperclips at the expense of all else.