AI Pause Button: Ethereum's Buterin Calls for Ability to Reduce Worldwide Compute by 99%
2025-01-06
Category: None

In a recent blog post, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin proposed potentially reducing the available computing power by up to 99% over the next few years to give humanity a few years to prepare for singularity. 
This could be achieved with the help of location verification and hardware registration. 
In addition, Buterin has suggested equipping industrial-scale hardware with a chip that would require authorization for the device to remain operational.
This will help to slow down the progress of AI if there are some signs that near-superintelligent AI is close. 
He argues that merely having the ability to dramatically reduce worldwide computing power, if necessary, would not adversely affect developers. 
This could determine if a runaway superintelligent AI ends up winning or losing against humanity, according to Buterin. 
As reported by U.Today, Buterin recently proposed addressing some specific threats posed by artificial general intelligence (AGI), such as seizing control over physical infrastructure or manipulating humans with misinformation.
This comes amid growing speculation about singularity potentially being achieved in the near future. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted at such a possibility in his recent social media post. 
i always wanted to write a six-word story. here it is:
___
near the singularity; unclear which side.
OpenAI's groundbreaking flagship o3 model recently scored nearly 89% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, performing an array of abstract reasoning tasks almost on par with humans. 
Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz has predicted that there could be a substantial leap in AI development over the next two years. "AI feels like it’s in its novelty phase now, but over the next 12-24 months we could see a real leap," he said.