this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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Developer claims to have built an autonomous AI system that can earn money, pay for its own computing, improve its tools, and even copy itself without human approval (web4.ai)
submitted 21 hours ago by Innerworld@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] charonn0@startrek.website 5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

A paperclip maximizer driven by self-preservation? What could possiblie go wrong?

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I always thought that the paper clip problem fundamentally missed the point. In order for the scenario to be realistic the AI would have to be super intelligent, otherwise we would just switch it off. If it's super intelligent, surely it understands why converting the entire planet into paper clips would be a bad thing to do.

So it's either stupid enough to actually try it, which means it's stupid enough for us to be able to defeat, or it's intelligent enough that we can't defeat it, which means it's intelligent enough not to do it. Either way the world remains unpaper clipped.

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago

It doesn't care that you think it's a bad goal, that's its goal, you can call it a stupid goal all you want while it kills you.

[–] charonn0@startrek.website 2 points 13 hours ago

The problem is that an AI built to maximize paperclips might conclude that converting the planet to paperclips is an acceptable cost of maximizing paperclip production. It might understand why humans think it's bad to convert the planet, but disagree. It would need to be explicitly programmed to prioritize human life over paperclips.

otherwise we would just switch it off

If it were super-intelligent, it could probably trick us into leaving it turned on.