- Vitalik Buterin warns against self-replicating AI and promotes human-augmenting technologies.
- Distilled human judgment offers a cheaper, real-time way to make collective decisions.
- Buterin supports AI enhancing human agency, not replacing it, like chatbots improving tasks.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, shared his thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) on X. He talked about how AI is being developed and what it means for humanity. He pointed out the difference between AI done “wrong” and AI done “right.”
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He warned against creating independent self-replicating AI systems that could lead to human disempowerment. Instead, he suggested combining AI with human judgment and collective decision-making.
He likened AI to mecha suits, powerful tools that enhance human intelligence and decision-making. However, he drew a line at self-replicating, autonomous AI systems, warning of the dangers they pose.
According to Buterin, such AI systems could risk “permanent human disempowerment,” leaving humans with little control over the technology they created.
Distilled Human Judgment: The Collective Decision-Making
Buterin also talked about “distilled human judgment” to make collective decision-making more efficient.
He referred to an idea from economist Robin Hanson. Basically, a high-cost, trustworthy human judgment mechanism is copied cheaper and faster. In this model, decisions aren’t made directly by humans but by a prediction market.
In practice, Buterin noted that people would use a prediction market every time they need to make a decision. The market would let participants predict the outcome of the decision if humans made it.
The Agentic AI Debate
In response to the growing debate on AI’s role in decision-making, Emad, the former CEO of Stability AI, pointed out the contrast between agentic AI and increasing human agency through design choices.
Buterin responded by explaining his view on “agents.” He talked about the difference between AI that makes complex plans without human input and simpler forms of AI, such as chatbots, which can replace graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to make everyday tasks more efficient.
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