Vitalik Buterin Says 'Unfriendly' AI Bigger Threat Than WW3: 'Could Kill Off Humanity For Good'

This article was originally published on June 9, 2022.

Ethereum ETH/USD creator Vitalik Buterin believes that unfriendly artificial intelligence (AI) poses the biggest risk to humanity.

What Happened: Buterin on Thursday (June 9) called for more eyes on the problem of "unfriendly AI risk," which he sees as the “biggest thing” to potentially derail humanity over the next one or two centuries.

Unfriendly-AI risk continues to be probably the biggest thing that could seriously derail humanity's ascent to the stars over the next 1-2 centuries. Highly recommend more eyes on this problem. https://t.co/G248XzRFaD

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 8, 2022

Buterin shared a paper by AI theorist and writer Eliezer Yudkowsky that made a case for why the current research community isn’t doing enough to prevent a potential future catastrophe at the hands of artificially generate intelligence.

When one of Buterin’s Twitter followers suggested that World War 3 is likely a bigger risk at the moment, the Ethereum co-founder disagreed.

Nah, WW3 may kill 1-2b (mostly from food supply chain disruption) if it's really bad, it won't kill off humanity. A bad AI could truly kill off humanity for good.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 8, 2022

At the forefront of AI innovation are companies like Tesla developing a humanoid robot Optimus, which CEO Elon Musk has said is the most important product the company is working on, even above its EV car business.

“The importance of Optimus will become apparent in the coming years,” Musk had said.