Can Our Civilization Survive Social Media?

How the traffic optimizer leads to civilizational suicide

There was a famous, very much before its time thought experiment called “The paperclip maximizer” that Nick Bostrom initially came up with all the way back in 2003. There are different variations of the short post he did, but here’s a common one:

Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paperclips as possible.

The AI will realize that it would be much better if there were no humans, because humans might decide to switch it off.

Because if humans do that, there will be fewer paperclips.

So the AI will try to get rid of humans.

The AI will also try to convert as much matter as possible into paperclips.

In other words, the AI has a normal human goal, but it doesn’t have the morals or ethical restraints we do. It would be as if someone said to you, “Get something to eat,” and you looked around the house, saw the dog, the cat, and the baby in the crib, and said, “Ah, there are things that can be eaten! Let me grab the butcher knife, and my task will be complete.”

Certainly, this i…