Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
This is a different and cleaner question, because it avoids issues with intelligent life evolving again, and the paperclipper creating other kinds of life and intelligence for scientific or other reasons in the course of pursuing paperclip production.
I would say that if we use a weighted mixture of moral accounts (either from normative uncertainty, or trying to reflect a balance among varied impulses and intuitions), then it matters that the paperclipper could do OK on a number of theories of welfare and value:
Paperclippers are worse than nothing because they might run ancestor simulations and prevent the rise of intelligent life elsewhere, as near as I can figure. They wouldn't enjoy life. I can't figure out how any of the welfare theories you specify could make paperclippers better than nothing?
Thought experiment:
Through whatever accident of history underlies these philosophical dilemmas, you are faced with a choice between two, and only two, mutually exclusive options:
* Choose A, and all life and sapience in the solar system (and presumably the universe), save for a sapient paperclipping AI, dies.
* Choose B, and all life and sapience in the solar system, including the paperclipping AI, dies.
Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
If anyone responds positively, subsequent questions would be which would be preferred, a paperclipper or a single bacteria; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of trilobites and their supporting ecology; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of australopithecines; and so forth, until the equivalent value is determined.