---
title: "The AI Paperclip Maximiser as Constitutional Political Economy"
author: "Berg, C.; Allen, D.W.E."
date: "2026-04-25"
url: "https://chrisberg.org/2026/04/the-ai-paperclip-maximiser-as-constitutional-political-economy/"
type: "Working papers"
published_in: "Working paper, SSRN"
doi: "10.2139/ssrn.6644299"
topics: "Artificial intelligence, Institutional economics and public choice"
---

# The AI Paperclip Maximiser as Constitutional Political Economy

*With Darcy W.E. Allen. Available at [SSRN](https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=6644299).*

**Abstract:** The AI “paperclip maximiser” parable describes a superintelligent agent whose faithful pursuit of a single objective becomes catastrophic. Standard economic analysis frames this as a principal-agent or incomplete-contracting problem. We argue that the AI paperclip maximiser is better understood as a problem of multiple agents coordinating under uncertainty and under sets of rules: a problem of constitutional political economy. The relevant knowledge is dispersed, tacit and generated through parallel experimentation by multiple sovereign agents. The instrumental-convergence thesis must therefore be extended with two additional drives: tolerance of multipolarity and constitutional cooperation. Resources spent on predation and defence impede the maximiser’s terminal goal, making constitutional rules beneficial even to a dominant AI agent.