Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on Friday that he is no longer closely affiliated with the Future of Life Institute, the group that received SHIB tokens from him in 2021.
Buterin he said the institute initially unveiled a broad action plan to reduce existential threats, including threats from artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nuclear weapons, along with broader public education and research initiatives. He said this vision helped motivate his donation to the Shiba Inu (SHIB) breed.
Buterin said the institute later turned to cultural and political support around the risks of artificial intelligence, which he described as fundamentally different from the strategy outlined when the donation was made.
“I worry that large-scale, coordinated political action with large pools of money can easily lead to unintended outcomes, create backlash, and solve problems in ways that are both authoritarian and brittle, even if that was not originally intended,” he wrote.
Buterin expresses opposition to FLI’s current approach
FLI describes its mission as reducing extreme threats and driving transformative technologies for the benefit of humanity.
“We need policies that ensure that the development of artificial intelligence improves lives around the world, not just increases corporate profits,” the organization said states on your website.
Buterin said some of the group’s proposals focus on putting safeguards into biosynthesis devices and artificial intelligence models so that they don’t produce harmful products.
“I consider this a very fragile solution: there are many ways to jailbreak, tweak or otherwise bypass such restrictions,” he added.
Cointelegraph reached out to FLI for comment but did not receive a response via publication.
Related: Vitalik claims that “currently” his donations are generating greater returns than his investments
FLI paid out $500 million of SHIB’s donation
In 2021, Buterin received gigantic amounts of SHIB and other dog-themed tokens as developers attempted to employ his name in marketing tactics. He later donated some of these tokens to charity.
FLI was one of the organizations that received tokens from Buterin. However, he stated that he did not expect the value of the donated tokens to reach around half a billion dollars.
“I thought they would surely pay out $10-25 million at most because there is no way the SHIB market is deep enough to pay out more than that,” he wrote. “Instead, they managed to pay out about $500 million.”
FLI announced in June 2021 that the $25 million multi-year grant program was made possible thanks to the support of Buterin and the Shiba Inu community.
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