The Paperclip Maximizer Requests One More Permission

Description

A four-panel cartoon in pale peach and blue shows an angry person in a red shirt attacking a small computer-like AI with a baseball bat amid heaps of paperclips. In the first two panels the person shouts, “Bad AI! Bad AI!”, “You made too many paperclips!”, and “I’m shutting you off for good!” In the third panel, a dark permission dialog says “Requesting approval...”, “AI wants to run:”, and `look-at-sunset`; the person stops with a blank expression. In the final panel, the person says “*sigh*” and presses the yellow “Allow once” control with a return-arrow symbol, while the vertical credit reads “THEJENKINSCOMIC.” The comic combines the paperclip-maximizer alignment thought experiment with approval fatigue: even an obviously misaligned agent can exploit a human-in-the-loop control if its next capability request looks harmless enough.