TechFlow News, March 13: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a public statement clarifying his relationship with the Future of Life Institute (FLI) and his stance on AI risk issues. Vitalik stated that in 2021, he passively received large quantities of SHIB and other dog-themed cryptocurrencies, with their paper value briefly exceeding $1 billion. He promptly donated half of these holdings to CryptoRelief and the other half to FLI—expecting FLI’s eventual liquidation proceeds to amount to only $10–25 million. In reality, however, FLI liquidated approximately $500 million worth (CryptoRelief did likewise).
Vitalik noted that FLI subsequently underwent an internal strategic shift, prioritizing large-scale political activism as its primary method—a marked departure from its original mission. He expressed concern over this pivot, warning that deploying massive funding pools toward political action risks unintended consequences and could devolve into authoritarian solutions—for instance, restricting open-source AI development to elevate a single “approved” institution to dominance. Such approaches carry serious blowback risks.
