Vitalik's latest long article discusses new views on d/acc, focusing on the role of AI and Crypto
Vitalik Buterin published a new long article "d/acc: one year later", which put forward new views on the concept and ideas of d/acc (decentralized acceleration) proposed last year, focusing on the core ideas of d/acc (decentralized, democratic differentiated defense acceleration) and covering principles, AI security supervision, the role of cryptocurrency in d/acc, and public product financing.
Vitalik proposed two major strategies for AI security: one is to establish a responsibility system, with the main targets including users (people who use artificial intelligence), deployers (intermediaries that provide AI services to users), and developers (people who build artificial intelligence); the second is to set up a global "soft pause" mechanism at the industrial hardware level, which can reduce the global available computing power by about 90-99% for 1-2 years during critical periods, giving humans more time to prepare. He added that the responsibility rule is a natural d/acc-friendly regulatory method.
The article also points out that there are some important connections between cryptocurrency and d/acc, specifically:
-d/acc is an extension of the underlying values of cryptocurrency (decentralization, censorship resistance, open global economy and society) to other areas of technology;
-Since crypto users are natural early adopters and have consistent values, the crypto community is a natural early user of d/acc technology;
-Many crypto technologies can be used in the d/acc subject area: blockchain for building more powerful and decentralized financial, governance and social media infrastructure, zero-knowledge proofs for privacy protection, etc.;
-There are also win-win opportunities in crypto-related technologies that are very useful for crypto projects but are also key to achieving d/acc goals: formal verification, computer software and hardware security, and adversarial governance technologies;
-In addition to these direct intersections, there is another important point of common interest: funding mechanisms.
The article also mentions innovative mechanisms including quadratic financing, retroactive public product financing, and deep financing, emphasizing that decentralized financing is crucial to the d/acc vision.
It believes that there will be major challenges in the coming decades, and has been thinking about the following two challenges recently:
- A powerful wave of new technologies, especially strong artificial intelligence, is emerging rapidly, and these technologies come with important pitfalls that we need to avoid. "AI superintelligence" may take five years to achieve, or it may take fifty years. In any case, it is not clear whether the default outcome is necessarily positive, because there are multiple traps to avoid;
- The world is becoming less and less cooperative. Many powerful actors seemed to act in accordance with noble principles at least sometimes in the past (cosmopolitanism, freedom, common humanity... etc.), but now more openly and actively pursue personal or tribal self-interest.
However, there is a silver lining to each of these challenges. First, we now have very powerful tools to complete the remaining work faster, including:
Currently and in the near future, artificial intelligence can be used to build other technologies and can be used as a component of governance (such as deep financing or information finance). It is also very relevant to BCI, which itself can further improve productivity.
Large-scale coordination can now be carried out on a larger scale than before. The internet and social media expanded the scope of coordination, global finance (including cryptocurrencies) increased its power, and now information defense and collaboration tools can improve their quality, and perhaps soon human-to-human BCIs can add depth.
Formal verification, sandboxing (web browsers, Docker, Qubes, GrapheneOS, etc.), secure hardware modules, and other technologies are constantly improving, making better cybersecurity possible, etc.
Second, now that many of the principles we hold dear are no longer held by a select few conservatives, they can be reclaimed by a broad coalition that anyone in the world can join. Cryptocurrencies have already taken advantage of this well and gained global appeal; d/acc can do the same.
