Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has once again raised a pressing issue, stating that he does not see a single coherent scenario for transitioning to artificial superintelligence (ASI). According to him, humanity is stuck between two extremes: "naive" and "naive squared" approaches to the future of AI.
The trigger was a discussion around the "AI 2040" scenario, which predicts the emergence of superintelligence by 2040 under almost any circumstances, except for titanic efforts to completely halt it. Critics of this scenario, Buterin observes, call it naive in assessing people's ability to coordinate. However, the Ethereum developer himself points to a mirror problem: opponents are equally naive in believing that the transition to ASI will be smooth and painless.
Power, open source, and warning signals
Buterin is particularly concerned about the rhetoric of some major AI companies. He is alarmed by the mindset that boils down to the formula: "open source is bad, and a good outcome is when our guys gain controlling world domination." According to the Ethereum founder, such statements in a "normal" world should trigger all political alarm signals simultaneously. He views superintelligence itself as a colossal risk of power concentration.
That is why Buterin promotes the d/acc platform, which focuses on developing formal verification, cryptography, secure open hardware, pandemic resilience, and public epistemology. The value of this direction is that it is useful under any development scenario—both fast and slow arrival of ASI. Notably, he positively assessed the "AI 2040" scenario itself for its friendliness toward open source.
Seeking compromise: triggers and pauses
As a way out of the deadlock, Buterin proposes pre-agreeing on a set of triggers signaling that "something serious is happening." Examples include super-pandemics, unemployment rates above 25%, or the emergence of autonomous weapons. If a sufficient number of such triggers are activated by an agreed deadline, the parties commit to seriously considering a slowdown or pause in development. The idea is that critics will accept this, expecting the triggers not to fire, while those concerned will accept it for the opposite reason.
Buterin also addressed the heads of tech giants, suggesting that if he were in Elon Musk's or Mark Zuckerberg's shoes, he would restructure social platforms to seek such mutually beneficial deals. However, he himself acknowledges the naivety of this idea.
My analysis: Buterin's position is a rare case where a leader in the crypto industry offers not just criticism but a concrete risk management mechanism. The idea of triggers and pauses is essentially an attempt to apply the principles of smart contracts and decentralized governance to the global AI problem. This could become the very "agreement" that both sides accept based on their current beliefs, albeit for different reasons. For now, we see a classic impasse: neither side is ready to concede, and the stakes rise every day.