Vitalik: The ideal distant future of AI is the deep integration of humans and machines, while preserving global pluralism
Odaily Odaily reported that Vitalik stated on the X platform that one direction for future AI development is deeper integration between humans and machines, including computers working more synergistically with humans, recognizing both conscious and subconscious signals emitted by humans, brain-computer interfaces, and computer-assisted telepathy to help multiple people better understand and collaborate with each other. The ultimate form is to eliminate the binary division between humans and machines and open up various positions on this spectrum.
Vitalik hopes that deeply integrated humans and machines can outperform separate humans and machines, continuing this trend until reaching the technological ceiling. The distant future AI outcomes he envisions include: the preservation of global political and economic pluralism, with no single company or government dominating; humans can choose to undergo technological upgrades to explore the universe at a level competitive with pure machines, or maintain the status quo and act in the world through robots that follow instructions; most of the Earth could become highly regulated nature reserves where people can continue their current lifestyles, while those wishing to do more radical things would venture into space.
AI itself, compared to other alternatives, could become too powerful, a country or company might gain a decisive advantage and lock it in permanently, powerful technological means could cause incalculable harm, and the path of human-machine integration itself might fail to retain enough humanity, ultimately becoming just another way to create powerful robots. Therefore, he hopes to navigate this narrow channel at a slower pace and supports proposals for deceleration or moratoriums, including ideas like Mutual Assured Compute Destruction that could provide a braking opportunity.
Vitalik stated that the world he idealizes is one where open-weight models prevail, and Dean Ball's judgment is completely correct that open-weight models have a decelerationist effect by suppressing capital expenditure on frontier models, even though this drives more capex on peripherals and applications. This can achieve deceleration without resorting to harsher political means. However, he believes we should not expect the world to naturally provide convenient economic and physical laws. Humans still have some agency over political laws, and there are many ways to change incentives without giving a single authority control, and these should be utilized.
