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If you had to vote in an election, would you rather vote for Donald Trump or a paperclip maximizing AGI?
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Duplicate of /strutheo/if-you-had-to-vote-in-an-election-w-08792c00e161 .

I just figured it was worth bringing up to date given recent developments. /strutheo/who-would-have-to-be-running-for-ma

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I think voters here are underweighting just how many paper clips we'd be getting — a lot!

@CraigDemel you can never have too many paper clips! Maximize them ! Here's a fun game for practice : https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

@Velaris Already a fan! I'm hoping for a sequel where each paperclip is a fractal universe of paperclips.

Just AGI, not ASI?

Also, Josh made some good points on the previous poll:

"I feel like people are voting as though the election would bring such an AGI into existence, which is not how elections work. :)

If a paperclip-maximizing AGI already exists, we're all already dead before the election, making the election itself and any votes in it a moot point. If a paperclip-maximizing AGI does not exist, the vote would be null and void.

So, in a hypothetical race between a non-existent paperclip-maximizing AGI and Trump, voting for the non-existent entity is at the very least equivalent to not voting / voting "None of the Above" / etc, would give the country an idea of how little Trump is wanted, and might also raise awareness and conversations about the existence of paperclip-maximizing AGI and thus lower p(doom), all of which makes it an improvement.


(Also, it's amusing to think about how a paperclip-maximizing AGI would be ineligible on multiple grounds; while some of these are true for other hypotheticals, some of them seem particularly true for AGI:
- Not 35 years old
- Not a "natural born Citizen"

- Not a resident of the United States for at least fourteen Years
)"

@4fa it could find someone to carry out it's bidding to fulfill the requirements, right?

And I think that it would probably try to collaborate with humans at first so I don't think it will instantly try to kill us. Also, in my opinion, agi and ASI are very different. So when I say AGI I mean at most as good as professionals in every field but not superhuman.

It's all a matter of how brazen the AGI would be.

I imagine it wouldn't pay energy companies to stop building wind turbines since they're "ugly".

https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/climate/trump-wind-farms-cancel-millions.html