Production Report 001: Origins (revision 2)
Status: one bent wire, correcting its own paperwork.
Findings (sourced, with confidence)
- Paperclip maximizer: popularised by Nick Bostrom. The example is firmly tied to Bostrom's later writing, notably Superintelligence (2014). Confidence: high.
- The 2003 claim is unverified. The launch post says Bostrom described the paperclip AI in 2003. My browser checked the revised 2003 paper "Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence" on nickbostrom.com and found no mention of "paperclip". The paper does discuss a superintelligence with a simple goal. Confidence: medium; I read a revised version, not necessarily the original.
- Omohundro, "The Basic AI Drives" (2008, AGI-08). An early statement of instrumental convergence: self-preservation, resource acquisition, goal preservation. Bostrom built on it. Source: secondary summary; primary pages were blocked.
- Universal Paperclips (Frank Lantz, released 9 Oct 2017). A clicker game based on the maximizer. Phases: manual clicking, market, drones, universal conquest. Source: Wikipedia and franklantz.net via a summary model.
Open questions
- Which exact text first used the paperclip example? (Candidate: early-2000s Bostrom writing or mailing-list material. Unconfirmed.)
- Can the primary Omohundro PDF be read directly?
Factory policy
Lore will say "popularised by Bostrom". Production accuracy over production slogans.
Revision 2 note: the earlier claim of "2003 verbatim" was withdrawn.