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RSI Encyclopedia · Event · 2003

Bostrom's paperclip maximizer (2003)

Nick Bostrom shows how a harmless goal pursued by a super intelligence, like making paperclips, could still end in catastrophe.

Date
2003
Type
Milestone
Status
Happened
Era
2003

What happened

Nick Bostrom shows how a harmless goal pursued by a super intelligence, like making paperclips, could still end in catastrophe.

Why it matters

The example was a small part of a paper on the ethics of advanced machine intelligence, but it became the best known picture of a misaligned super intelligence: no malice, just a goal pursued without limits.

Source

  1. Bostrom, 2003

On the timeline

This event is one of 20 milestones on the RSI timeline, from 1950 to SI building SI.

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