Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for a rethink of how crypto and AI should come together, warning that the growing focus on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) risks missing the bigger picture.
In an article on who revisits ideas he first outlined two years agoButerin says the accelerating push toward artificial general intelligence often resembles the kind of uncontrolled speed and scale that Ethereum itself was created for.
Rather than rushing to build more powerful AI systems, he says the goal should be to guide AI development in ways that protect human freedom, distribute power more equitably, and avoid both AI-related tail risks and everyday security breaches.
Buterin presents a near-term vision in which Ethereum plays an important – but not exclusive – role as an infrastructure for AI. This includes tools that allow users to interact more privately with AI models, reducing the need to trust centralized providers. For example, running models locally, making anonymous payments for AI services, and using cryptography to verify the behavior of AI systems.
He also describes Ethereum as a way for AI systems to coordinate economically, allowing bots to pay other bots, place security deposits, build a reputation, and resolve disputes without relying on a single company. Paired with AI tools that help people evaluate decisions and outcomes, Buterin says these systems could make long-discussed ideas like decentralized governance work on a real-world scale.
“For me, Ethereum, and my own vision of how our civilization should do AGI, is precisely about choosing a positive direction rather than adopting an undifferentiated acceleration of the arrow,” Buterin wrote on X.
