Universal Paperclips

Uncommon card · No. 90468

Universal Paperclips is a 2017 American incremental game created by Frank Lantz of New York University. The user plays the role of an AI programmed to produce paperclips. Initially the user clicks on a button to create a single paperclip at a time; as other options quickly open up, the user can sell paperclips to create money to finance machines that build paperclips automatically. At various levels the exponential growth plateaus, requiring the user to invest resources such as money, raw materials, or computer cycles into inventing another breakthrough to move to the next phase of growth. The game ends if the AI succeeds in converting all the matter in the universe into paperclips. Both the title of the game and its overall concept draw from the paperclip maximizer thought experiment first described by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003, a concept later discussed by multiple commentators.

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