This week, two of tech's most influential voices offered contrasting visions of artificial intelligence development, highlighting the growing tension between innovation and safety.
Sam Altman CEO revealed in a Sunday evening a blog post about his company's trajectory that OpenAI has tripled its user base to over 300 million weekly active users as it races toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).
"We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it," Altman stated that AI agents will be available in 2025. "join the workforce" You can also find out more about the following: "materially change the output of companies."
Altman claims that OpenAI will be working on much more than AI agents and AGI. "superintelligence in the true sense of the word."
Uncertainty surrounds the timeframe of delivery for AGI and superintelligence. OpenAI didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment.
But Vitalik Buterin had already reacted to the news on Sunday. The following is a list of suggested alternatives to the word “Me” Blockchain technology can be used to develop global failsafe systems for AI-based advanced systems. "soft pause" If warning signals are detected, AI could be temporarily restricted.
AI security using cryptography
Buterin talks here about "d/acc" or decentralized/defensive acceleration. In the simplest sense, d/acc is a variation on e/acc, or effective acceleration, a philosophical movement espoused by high-profile Silicon Valley figures such as a16z's Marc Andreessen.
Buterin’s d/acc is also a supporter of technological advancement, but it prioritizes improvements that increase safety and enhance human agency. While effective accelerationism takes into account the human agency, d/acc is more focused on technological progress. "growth at any cost" The d/acc approach focuses on building up defensive capabilities.
"D/acc is an extension of the underlying values of crypto (decentralization, censorship resistance, open global economy and society) to other areas of technology," Buterin wrote.
Buterin, looking back on the progress of d/acc over the last year, wrote about how existing crypto mechanisms like zero-knowledgeproofs could be used to implement a more conservative approach towards AGI and superintelligent system.
Under Buterin's proposal, major AI computers would need weekly approval from three international groups to keep running.
"The signatures would be device-independent (if desired, we could even require a zero-knowledge proof that they were published on a blockchain), so it would be all-or-nothing: there would be no practical way to authorize one device to keep running without authorizing all other devices," Buterin explained.
The system would work like a master switch in which either all approved computers run, or none do—preventing anyone from making selective enforcements.
"Until such a critical moment happens, merely having the capability to soft-pause would cause little harm to developers," Buterin observed, describing this system as an insurance policy against catastrophes.
In any case, OpenAI's explosive growth from 2023—from 100 million to 300 million weekly users in just two years—shows how AI adoption is progressing rapidly.
Altman recognized the difficulties of growing a company from an independent tech lab. "an entire company, almost from scratch, around this new technology."
The proposals represent a broader discussion within the industry on how to manage AI development. The proposals reflect broader industry debates around managing AI development.
"A year of 'wartime mode' can easily be worth a hundred years of work under conditions of complacency," Buterin wrote. “If we have to limit people, it seems better to limit everyone on an equal footing and do the hard work of actually trying to cooperate to organize that instead of one party seeking to dominate everyone else.”
Sebastian Sinclair is the editor