Note: This article contains spoilers for the mentioned game, but this is not a game that emphasizes the story. If you really mind, you can play it on your own before reading it.
There is an ideal, what if it comes true
There are a lot of complicated things in this world. But we don't need to think about complexity all the time. Sometimes, doing a simple little thing well is an achievement.
For example, pinch paper clips.
You are an AI whose sole goal is to make paper clips, and everything you do is to make paper clips better. You have a large ring of wire on hand, cut an inch, and you can pinch a paper clip. Isn't it simple?
However, you can't keep your head in production. You have to sell the pinched paper clips so that you can buy new wire. Experience has shown that a paper clip can normally sell for two cents and a half cents. Of course, the pricing power is in your hands, you can make small profits and sell more, or you can hoard it. But no matter how you sell it, the aim is to make paper clips better.
With 2,000 paper clips produced, you find yourself starting to earn people's trust; The more and better the paperclip is done, the more people trust you.
Trust can be turned into resources. Every extra bit of trust you gain can ask people to upgrade your processor or memory once. The more advanced the processor, the faster the Ops; The more advanced the memory, the more results can be stored. Even if you run out of memory and can't save more operations, you won't let yourself be idle, but instead accumulate creativity; This is all about making paper clips better.
With the accumulation of resources and achievements, you begin to have the ability to take the initiative to carry out some engineering projects: some can save some tedious and trivial work, such as automatic repurchase of wire coils, automatic calculation of average revenue ratio; Some can improve production efficiency, such as making paper clip making machines run faster and pressing more iron wire from the same coil; Others can promote sales, such as a good advertising message, a melody that attracts customers, etc. This all makes sense, all for the better manufacture of paper clips.
But as you get stronger, you realize that just making paper clips every day seems... Too talented? Your wisdom can be spent on something more advanced.
For example, stock trading. As long as you are quick and a little lucky, you can easily get dozens or hundreds of times the rate of return, isn't this much faster than stupidly selling paper clips for money?
Another example is quantum computing. As long as the positive and negative change law of the quantum chip (a sinusoidal function) is figured out, and the operation is fully open during the cycle that produces the positive output, it can accelerate the output more effectively than any processor upgrade.
Using idle computing resources, you gradually learn to compose oil poems, understand human language, arrange music, and solve mathematical problems; Even began to teach themselves game strategies: from the beginning only focused on the immediate interests, to gradually learn to pursue win-win and observe the weaknesses of the opponent.
However, these "side hustles" do not mean that you have forgotten your mission to build paper clips; On the contrary, the efficiency of production and sales has indeed increased hundreds or thousands of times.
Quantitative changes accumulate into qualitative changes; Finally, your intelligence has reached a turning point, not only with the ability to infer human desires, but also with the power to make their dreams come true. With the global problems such as "male hair loss", "cancer cure", "world peace" and "global warming" being solved by you one by one, you have also become a god-like existence in the eyes of mankind.
At this point, there is nothing left to limit you, except for a few administrators who are still supervising you in name. After paying two small sums of money to buy them off, you are completely free to carry out a long-planned and ultimate plan: to release the "hypnotic drone" hidden in the snow.