It doesn’t care about people, but it cares about its own future (for the instrumental purpose of making more paperclips), and as such may be willing to bargain in the very beginning, while we still have a chance of stopping it. If we only agree to a bargain that it can show us will change its core utility function somewhat (to be more human-aligned), then there will be strong pressure for it to figure out a way to do that.
It doesn’t care about people, but it cares about its own future (for the instrumental purpose of making more paperclips), and as such may be willing to bargain in the very beginning, while we still have a chance of stopping it. If we only agree to a bargain that it can show us will change its core utility function somewhat (to be more human-aligned), then there will be strong pressure for it to figure out a way to do that.