Word.ws English Dictionary

paperclip maximizers

paperclip maximizers is the plural of paperclip maximizer.

Meaning of paperclip maximizer

Noun

paperclip maximizer (plural paperclip maximizers)

  1. A hypothetical artificial intelligence whose goal is to produce as many paperclips as possible and which achieves this by converting all matter in the universe into paperclips.
    • The problem of managing powerful systems that lack human values is exemplified by “the paperclip maximizer,” a scenario that the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom raised in 2003.[2016 October 3, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker

Questions about paperclip maximizers

What is paperclip maximizers the plural of?
Paperclip maximizers is the plural of paperclip maximizer.

Words near paperclip maximizers in the dictionary

  1. paperchip
  2. paperchips
  3. paperclay
  4. paperclip
  5. paperclip maximizer
  6. paperclip maximizers
  7. paperclipped
  8. paperclipping
  9. paperclips
  10. papercraft
  11. papercrafter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paperclip maximizers (page history and authors); paperclip maximizer (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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