I hope to use them to help work out the answers in extreme, edge-case conditions, to test various ethical systems and choose which one(s) provide the best advice for my long-term good.
Given that, so far, various LWers have said that a paperclipper could be better, worse, or around the same value as a sapience-free universe, I at least seem to have identified a boundary that's somewhat fuzzy, even among some of the people who'd have the best idea of an answer.
Hard cases make bad law.
If you're going to decide whether to use Newtonian physics or general relativity for some everyday situation, you don't decide based on which theory makes the correct predictions near a black hole, you decide based on which is easier to use while still giving usable results.
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.