Silly goals won't attract funding or support, and such projects are likely to be overtaken by better-organised ones that provide useful services.

Which should be the standard assumption. And I haven't heard even a single argument how that is not what is going to happen.

So: it probably is what's going to happen. So we probably won't get a universe tiled with paperclips - but we might wind up with a universe full of money, extraordinary stock prices, or high national security.