It’s very salient to me that the very successful paperclips game managed to hit many hard parts of doing a game on AI Safety:
Popular (450k+ unique players in the first 11 days)
Managed to convey core ideas faithfully
Was aesthetically a good experience and genuinely a good game
I personally quite enjoyed it
But despite the fairly impressive output, the game, AFAIK, has ~zero traceable long-term impact. I’m not aware of anybody who was convinced to work on technical AIS as a result of the game, or people who said that their world-models for AI risk were improved, or significant pieces of communication that built on the game, or tangible advocacy or policy wins.
Oh, I actually know of multiple people who told me they found a bunch of safety ideas because of the universal paperclips game. My guess is that it would have very likely been worth $100k+ by my lights. Of course this kind of thing would require proper surveying to identify, but my guess is if you included a question for it, you would have it show up for at least 1-2 people in the Open Phil survey, though I am definitely not confident.
Oh, I actually know of multiple people who told me they found a bunch of safety ideas because of the universal paperclips game. My guess is that it would have very likely been worth $100k+ by my lights. Of course this kind of thing would require proper surveying to identify, but my guess is if you included a question for it, you would have it show up for at least 1-2 people in the Open Phil survey, though I am definitely not confident.