About 18 months before speaking, the speaker considered the paperclip maximizer a cautionary tale about what harmful actions a model might take when tasked with maximizing paperclips and factory output.

“I played Factorio for years, and about 18 months ago I was looking into this idea of the paperclip maximizer, that kind of cautionary tale where if you set a model to maximize paperclips and maximize a factory,”

“what kind of bad stuff do they end up doing?”

“in furtherance of that goal.”