Artificial intelligence’s boom this year has galvanized technologists in a way bitcoin, ethereum and crypto never did—though U.S. dollar collapse could change that.
The AI tech surge has stifled interest in the latest bitcoin, ethereum and crypto price boom that’s pushed the bitcoin price to twice where it was this time last year as big money prepares to “flood” in.
Now, as bitcoin and crypto traders brace for a Binance bombshell, ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has revealed his own brand of “techno-optimism” that will use bitcoin and crypto to help build a decentralized AI that emphasizes security and privacy.
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“We need active human intention to choose the directions that we want, as the formula of ‘maximize profit’ will not arrive at them automatically,” Buterin wrote in a lengthy blog post, referring to the recent meltdown at AI pioneer OpenAI that was reportedly caused by differing opinions within its board on whether to commercialize its technology.
Buterin coined his own “d/acc”—short for defensive (or decentralization, or differential) acceleration—in response to the growing popularity of the “e/acc” (effective accelerationist) movement that he fears may be gambling on continued U.S. military dominance.
“This is where my own emphasis on cryptographic technologies such as blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs comes in,” Buterin wrote, pointing to blockchain as allowing people to create economic and social structures without “centralized actors.”
“Cryptocurrency allows individuals to save money and make financial transactions, as they could before the internet with cash, without dependence on trusted third parties that could change their rules on a whim.”
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Buterin names blockchain technology, first used by bitcoin, as “an excellent example of d/acc principles: they allow users and communities to verify trustworthiness without compromising privacy, and protect their security without relying on centralized choke points that impose their own definitions of who is good and bad.”
Buterin’s crypto and blockchain-linked “defensive” AI development philosophy is designed to prevent a single AI from becoming dominant, preserving humanity’s place as Earth’s “apex species” and preventing AI from causing “human extinction.”
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