Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and add free, plus hours of bonus content, check

out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

We've discussed some alternative geometries for artificial worlds, like cylinders or donuts,

or even flat disks, but in the future, humanity might end up living on giant paper clips.

In our discussion of artificial intelligence on this channel, we often examine science fiction

tropes for things like machine and AI rebellions, and try to look at how realistic the behavior

of those machines are, and I thought today we'd take a fun look at the paperclip maximizer

and see where it leads us. It's a thought experiment by philosopher

Nick Bostrom, whose work on matters like the simulation hypothesis or anthropic principle

we've looked at before too. It got popularized over at Lesrong and other forms, and more so

by a game that lets you play as the paperclip maximizer.

The core concept is that even seemingly harmless commands and goals for an artificial

intelligence can go horribly wrong.

We want to go a bit deeper and obliquely than that basic concept today, but we'll start

with a simple example.

You own an office supply company and manufacture paper clips.

To improve production you get an artificial intelligence installed and it asks what is my purpose,

and you tell it that its top priority is to make paper clips.

It asks how many and you say, as many as you can,

you make paper clips, do whatever you have to do to maximize paperclip production.

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