The Unexpected Philosophical Depths of the Clicker Game Universal Paperclips

In 2017, Lantz put Universal Paperclips into the world, and it went viral, drawing in hundreds of thousands of players a day and crashing the servers that it ran on. And, although Lantz tweeted, “You play an AI who makes paperclips,” when he introduced his game, many players assumed that they were playing as humans. Lantz designed Universal Paperclips to provoke ideas about artificial intelligence, clicker games, and environmental devastation, but he also believes that it provokes an aesthetic response.

Source: www.newyorker.com