This question of intent…
…becomes far more serious in the age of AI. It acts, decides, and interacts on its own.
Buterin recently mentioned that the real issue is not how powerful AI becomes, but who controls it and how its behavior is verified. The goal is to shape its direction.
Warning against systems that concentrate power or operate beyond human oversight, he wrote,
“I want an AI future where we foster human freedom and empowerment…”
Source: X
This is where Ethereum fits in, as infrastructure around it. A neutral layer where AI systems can make payments, prove actions, and build reputation transparently.
Think of this. AI agents could pay for services, interact with other agents, or post security deposits on-chain. These actions create accountability, the behavior of which, becomes traceable. Trust, in turn, becomes verifiable.
As Buterin explained, the goal is to make “trustless and/or private interaction with AIs possible.”
AMBCrypto previously reported that Buterin has proposed personal AI agents to address DAO voting fatigue.
Instead of users manually voting on every proposal, private AI models trained on their preferences could vote on their behalf.
He noted that “the usual solution, delegation, is disempowering,” especially when participation drops and power concentrates with large holders.
As AI expands what machines can do, who ensures they act the way users actually would?
When systems optimize the wrong things
Here’s a different example of the same vein.
Prediction markets were supposed to solve a very specific problem. They were designed to aggregate collective intelligence and help make better decisions. But Buterin now worries they are drifting away from that purpose.
Instead of helping people manage real-world risk, many prediction markets are dominated by short-term bets on crypto prices, sports, and viral events. These markets generate activity, but not necessarily insight.
As he put it,
“(teams often) capitulate to these things because they bring in large revenue during a bear market where people are desperate.”
The system is working… but towards the wrong goal.
This is the same problem in crypto and the internet. Systems focus on what they can easily measure and not on what actually matters, like accuracy or real usefulness.
Buterin is of the belief that prediction markets could help. He suggests using them to track real-world costs like housing, food, or healthcare. AI tools could then help people automatically protect themselves against those rising costs.
“You have price indices on all major categories of goods and services… and prediction markets on each category…”
In that model, prediction markets become a tool for protection. The difference, again, comes down to intent.
From executing code to protecting intent
All of Buterin’s recent ideas describe a blueprint for how the future internet itself may work.
His core principle is that no single signal should be trusted completely. Not a signature, an AI agent, or even a user’s click. Systems should rely on multiple overlapping checks to approximate what a person actually meant to do.
This is how humans already build trust.
Crypto, in its early days, focused on “trustless” execution. But Buterin seems to recognize that code can execute perfectly and still produce the wrong outcome if intent is misunderstood.
The next phase is trust-minimized interpretation. Systems that don’t blindly execute commands, but interpret them safely. In that world, Ethereum could ideally be a coordination layer.
In an internet run increasingly by machines, the scarcest resource will be the certainty that systems do what humans actually mean.
Final Summary
- Vitalik Buterin says crypto’s biggest risk is the growing gap between what users intend and what systems actually execute.
- Ethereum could evolve into a coordination layer where AI agents vote, transact, and act.