Buterin vs. AI Dictatorship: Why Dreams of "World Domination" Are Dangerous for Humanity
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has once again entered the debate on the future of artificial intelligence, this time with harsh criticism of industry giants. His main thesis: humanity is stuck between two "naive" scenarios, and neither offers a real plan for managing the transition to artificial superintelligence (ASI).
The trigger for his statement was a dispute around the "AI 2040" scenario, which assumes the inevitable emergence of ASI by that deadline under almost any circumstances—unless humanity makes titanic efforts to stop it. Critics, according to Buterin, call this forecast naive, overestimating people's ability to coordinate. But they themselves, as Vitalik emphasizes, fall into another extreme, naively believing that the transition to superintelligence will be smooth and painless.
Red flags from the Ethereum creator
Buterin is particularly concerned about the rhetoric of some major AI companies. He is alarmed by the mindset where "open source is bad, and a good outcome is when our guys achieve controlling world domination." According to the analyst, in any "normal" world, such statements should trigger all political alarm bells simultaneously. He views superintelligence itself as a colossal risk of power concentration.
That is why Buterin promotes the d/acc concept—a platform combining formal verification, cryptography, secure open hardware, pandemic resilience, and public epistemology. The value of these areas lies in their usefulness in both future scenarios—whether with a rapid arrival of ASI or without it.
Seeking compromise: triggers for humanity
Buterin considers finding a deal acceptable to both sides as the key solution. He proposes pre-agreeing on a set of triggers signaling that "something serious is happening"—for example, a super-pandemic, unemployment above 25%, or the emergence of autonomous weapons. If a sufficient number of such triggers are activated, the parties commit to seriously considering a slowdown or pause in AI development.
Vitalik even addressed tech giant leaders: if he were in Elon Musk's or Mark Zuckerberg's shoes, he would restructure social platforms to search for such mutually beneficial deals. However, he himself admits that this idea might also be naive.
Expert opinion: Buterin's position is not just criticism but an attempt to build bridges between two polar camps. The cryptocurrency market, which largely relies on principles of decentralization and openness, is particularly sensitive to the risks of power centralization in the hands of AI monopolies. The "triggers" he proposes are essentially an attempt to create a smart contract for all of humanity, which looks both brilliant and utopian. However, in a world where tech giants already control vast amounts of data, without such mechanisms, we risk getting not superintelligence, but a super-dictatorship.