TechFlow news, July 20. According to a series of tweets posted by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on X on July 20, he engaged in deep reflection on AI capability growth and the future of humanity.
Vitalik divided the evolution of machine capabilities into three stages: the Industrial Revolution (physical repetitive labor), the Computer Era (mental tasks definable by logic), and the LLM Era (mental and partial physical tasks defined based on massive samples). He pointed out that the current core question lies in: whether LLMs plus subsequent improvements can ultimately cover all unique human capabilities, or if a fourth or fifth technological wave is still needed.
Regarding the definition of AGI, Vitalik proposed: AGI refers to AI that, if uploaded into a robot body and humans suddenly disappeared, could still independently continue civilization. He emphasized that once AGI is realized, it will be an "irreversible turning point," and humanity's dominance over Earth will remain only due to historical inertia rather than capability advantage.
Regarding the future path, Vitalik places hope on deep human-machine integration—eliminating the binary boundary between humans and machines through technologies such as brain-computer interfaces and consciousness uploading, enabling humans to maintain competitiveness before the technological ceiling arrives. He also called for maintaining global political and economic diversification, avoiding a single country or enterprise monopolizing AI advantages, and expressed support for AI development "slowdown" and "pause" proposals, tending towards achieving decentralized slowdown through an open-source weights model, rather than relying on hardline political measures.
