Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes that AI should not be seen as a competitor to mankind, but instead as a complimentary tool that humans can harness in order to advance into the future.
At ETHPrague on May 28, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on the age-old debate of whether artificial intelligence will one day dethrone human judgement. He believes that AI will be an inevitable part of the human evolution, but not necessarily as a competitor.
“I think we’re going into this interesting mode where it is not necessarily AI versus human, but AI plus human,” said Vitalik Buterin during his fireside chat with world wide web founder Tim Berners-Lee.
Buterin referred to events in history where computers were able to outsmart humans, such as the 1996 chess tournament between the computer Deep Blue and Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. In the end, IBM’s computer was able to defeat the grandmaster in a game of computer chess.
“We definitely don’t want to kind of delude ourselves into thinking that’s something that by default will be here like the the situation forever, but you know there definitely will be a period of time when that’s the situation for any particular task,” he continued.
Having said that, Vitalik Buterin remarked that there are some things that AI is better at doing compared to the average human mind. One example that he brought up was how AI is able to summarize human preferences through the algorithm and make good predictions and approximations based on the data it has gathered.
In the future, he predicted that governance will one day involve AI in some way, stating that “the future of both individual and collective decision making will involve AI in some form.”
Buterin suggested that instead of trying to beat AI, mankind should focus more on exploring how best to use it to our advantage. Though, he does not believe one AI model should be hailed superior above all.
“I believe in the AI being the player in the game. Let AI be in the game, but it’s something that is absolutely worth approaching and using intelligently,” said Buterin.
Overall, Buterin said that he feels that the digital world is improving, especially in terms of data privacy. One example he mentioned was how encrypted messages, known as zero-knowledge proofs, have become the default mode for communication apps instead of just an optional feature.
However, these improvements are also accompanied by new challenges that mankind must learn to overcome as they navigate the digital world.
The interplay between “technological developments and the legal norms and social norms are super important,” Buterin concluded.
