Are Tech Bros Their Own Baddies?
Nick Bostrom, the court philosopher of billionaire tech bros, posits the “paperclip maximizer,” a powerful AI designed to do one thing: make paperclips. So it destroys all of humanity in its quest to turn the whole planet into an optimal paperclip factory. Tech bros think this is a real risk we should spend serious resources to thwart.
These same tech bros tell us the only purpose of humanity is to maximize pleasure, so we should turn other planets into “computronium” in order to create simulated life forms that can experience happiness. We should even ignore present-day, real-world problems like climate change if it helps us develop this technology.
Yes, that’s right. The tech bros are the paperclip maximizers.