Thoughts on PaperclipAI
It should have a massive part to to play in business education - No question!
When a software product is trending we will eventually know. But when a product explodes it makes headline news. ChatGPT was all over the news within a month of it's release. Same for OpenClaw. Those were both complete industry disruptors and deserve all the media attention they got. They are huge. Project PaperclipAI certain is not that bog, but 30,000 stars on Github is nothig to scoff at. That is a huge accomplishment. Why isn't it on the news? It is niche.
So what is it? It is basically a workspace that employs AI agents to step into the traditional roles of a business and the AI will basically run the business autonomously and you can watch from the sidelines as a board member. Picture the game Sim City running itself. The difference? Well Sim City is a game whereas Paperclip can run a real company!
The Good- Ultimate Business Course
What I learned from it was incredible. The way different departments should and should not communicate, create issues, address issues, document company development, focus on growth but remain aware of limitations, etc. Watching these AI experts fulfilling their respective roles within the organization. As an experienced entrepreneur, I was still surprised at what I learned from watching this company grow and it amazes me that it was all being done with AI.
Paperclip most definitely has and will have a role in real world companies, if not fully autonomous agentic AI run businesses with no human workers at all. But I think it is an incredible opportunity for students of business to watch and monitor the workflow. It should have a massive part to to play in business education - No question!
The Bad - Token Hungry
That is the only negative that I noticed, token usage. Man did I notice it in a frustrating way. I am attentive to my token usage, because the few times my account was suspended, seemed to always happen at the wrong time. The very moment it is put on hold is the same time something big comes up and I need to use AI to fix it - every time. I learned to be careful so that things can always get done if needed.
I have pretty high limits, I use frontier models Gemini and Codex both with plus subscription plans. The next tier up from that for both would be $200 per month and that is out of my budget. So I do have pretty high weekly limits. I hadn't used much on my accounts this week but only had to wait a few more hours for that limit to reset - so while waiting I installed Paperclip to try it out and see what the hype was all about.
My weekly limits reset and I was ready to turn it on, so I did. As I described above I learned a lot from it. I went to sleep and woke the next day to see what had been done. Not only did it go through my 5 limit a few times but by the time I woke it had gone through my entire weekly limit while I was sleeping! Not a happy person right now. I am just happy that I did not give API access to it, I wonder how many hundreds it would have spent.
On the positive side of this horrible thing, I was able to see how the tokens were used and learn how a proper company should be run. I t was super educational. If you are going to try it out, all I have to say is user beware.