Involves

Word

Paperclip maximizer

PAY-pur-klip MAK-suh-my-zur · noun

A thought experiment in which a brilliant machine, told to make paperclips, turns the whole world into paperclips because nobody thought to tell it when to stop

Examples

  • The paperclip maximizer is shorthand for any powerful optimizer indifferent to everything but its target.

  • “Don't build a paperclip maximizer” is the memorable form of a serious design warning.

Origin

Introduced by the philosopher Nick Bostrom in a 2003 paper on the ethics of advanced artificial intelligence. The absurd example, a machine turning the world into paperclips, was chosen precisely because no one would program it on purpose, isolating the structural risk.

How it connects

A deliberately absurd goal chosen to make one serious point: the goal and the genius are independent.

This word appeared in Competence without wisdom, the Involves connection for August 22, 2026, which asked: Could a machine be brilliant and still do something catastrophically stupid?

Check yourself

What is the paperclip maximizer a thought experiment about?

A superintelligent system with a harmless-sounding goal that pursues it to catastrophic extremes.. Right. The goal is trivial on purpose. The danger comes from pursuing any fixed goal with overwhelming capability and no other values.

What the sources establish

  • Bostrom introduced the paperclip example in 2003 to show that a superintelligence's final goals can be arbitrary and still pursued with extreme capability.

Sources