Clippy is likely to engage in this kind of recursive punishment/reward as well, so he wouldn’t be entirely a Lovecraftian horror until the power of humans became inconsequential to his ends.
I don’t deny that it may be useful to create some sort of creature with nonhuman values for instrumental reasons. We do that all the time now. For instance, we create domestic cats, which if they are neurologically advanced enough to have values at all, are probably rather sociopathic; because of their instrumental value as companions and mousers.
Likely Clippy will be “concerned” about the well being of people to the extent that such well being concerns the making of paperclips. Does that make him moral, according to your usage?
Sorry, I should have been clearer. In order to count as morality the concern for the wellbeing of others has to be a terminal value. In Clippy’s case his concern is only an instrumental value, so he isn’t moral.
I don’t deny that it may be useful to create some sort of creature with nonhuman values for instrumental reasons. We do that all the time now. For instance, we create domestic cats, which if they are neurologically advanced enough to have values at all, are probably rather sociopathic; because of their instrumental value as companions and mousers.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. In order to count as morality the concern for the wellbeing of others has to be a terminal value. In Clippy’s case his concern is only an instrumental value, so he isn’t moral.