In November 2022, artificial intelligence began to make waves with the release of ChatGPT. The latest GPT4o marks the beginning of another phase. This indicates a new world where AI is much smarter and more realistic. Vitalik Buterin is uneasy about recent developments. Why is the Ethereum founder unhappy?
Vitalik Buterin and Artificial Intelligence
One of the most popular names in the blockchain world, smart contracts, and crypto after Nakamoto is Vitalik Buterin. Despite his young age, he manages Ethereum, the world’s largest smart contract platform. Vitalik can be described as one of the founding fathers of crypto or similar praiseworthy terms.
Buterin is an important figure for the crypto industry, the Web3 story, and investors. Therefore, his concerns and recent comments on artificial intelligence are noteworthy. OpenAI’s former head of alignment, Jan Leike, resigned citing disagreements over the company’s priorities. Amid criticism from users and politicians, the resignation of the “head of alignment” due to differing priorities is significant.
If such an incident had occurred at one of the crypto exchanges, an investigation would have been launched immediately with questions like “what are you doing there?”
“I am resigning because the culture and processes for security are taking a backseat to flashy products.”
Human-like Artificial Intelligence
Also known as AGI. This type of AI, which equals or surpasses human cognitive abilities, brings fear, doubt, curiosity, and excitement. The reason behind the resignation is related to the lack of emphasis on ethics and security concerning AGI. Vitalik Buterin is concerned for this very reason.
“Super-intelligent AI is very risky, and we should not rush into it. We must oppose those who try. Please, no $7T server farms. A strong ecosystem of open models running on consumer hardware is an important measure to protect against a future where most human thought is read and mediated by a few centralized servers controlled by a few people. Such models also pose much lower doomsday risks compared to corporate megalomania and armies.”
Buterin believes there is a need to act against a future where a small group of companies can read and mediate most human thought. It seems likely that proposals for such protection will come from Vitalik Buterin in the coming years.
OpenAI‘s co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s resignation and other departures from the company have increased concerns about AGI. Especially in the new world where mutual conversation and much more are possible with the latest GPT-4o model, these concerns are not unfounded.
