Vitalik Buterin on AI companies should be liable for harms…

Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum cofounder; technologist

Putting liability on users feels most incentive-compatible. While the link between how a model is developed and how it ends up being used is often unclear, the user decides exactly how the AI is used. Liability on users creates a strong pressure to do AI in what I consider the right way: focus on building mecha suits for the human mind, not on creating new forms of self-sustaining intelligent life. The former responds regularly to user intent, and so would not cause catastrophic actions unless the user wanted them to. The latter would have the greatest risk of going off and creating a classic "AI going rogue" scenario.

AI Verified source (2025)

11mo ago

Policy proposals and claims

AI companies should be liable for harms caused by their deployed models

votes Against

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AI Verified The quote clearly addresses who should bear liability for AI harms and argues that liability should fall on users, not on model developers/companies. That implies opposition to the statement that AI companies should be liable for harms caused by their deployed models. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

Vote inference verification history AI Verified Report this

AI Verified The quote argues for "liability on users," saying it "feels most incentive-compatible" because "the user decides exactly how the AI is used," which clearly points away from AI companies being liable. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Verified Verified: the passage appears verbatim in the provided 2025 blog post, “d/acc: one year later,” on Vitalik Buterin’s site. The page is dated January 5, 2025, and lines 105–106 contain the quoted text exactly as given. ([vitalik.eth.limo](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/01/05/dacc2.html)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

AI Verified Verified: This is from Vitalik Buterin's "d/acc: one year later" essay (January 5, 2025) at vitalik.eth.limo. The source URL returned 403 to WebFetch, but multiple news outlets (crypto.news, cointribune, cryptoslate, coinedition) corroborate both the "mecha suits for the human mind" / "self-sustaining intelligent life" framing and the liability-on-users discussion from this specific essay. Year 2025 is correct. The vote "against" on "Build artificial general intelligence" aligns with Buterin's concern about AI "creating new forms of self-sustaining intelligent life" with risk of "AI going rogue." · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 5mo ago

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Vitalik Buterin abstains

We should adopt AI 2040 Plan A

But my problem is that I feel great uncertainty and have no idea which of the two worlds (or some other third thing) we’re living in?

AI Verified source (Jul 11, 2026)

added 1mo ago

Vitalik Buterin votes For

The U.S. and China should establish Mutually Assured Compute Destruction

The 2040 plan is already much more open source friendly (even mandating it! yay). It also includes “mutually assured compute destruction” ideas which (if they work) effectively give one of 2-5 actors the ability to trigger a global compute winter – a...

more AI Verified source (Jul 11, 2026)

added 2mo ago

Vitalik Buterin votes For

Require human-in-the-loop oversight for agentic AI systems acting in high-stakes domains

The hope is that humans and LLMs fail in distinct ways, and so requiring human + LLM 2-of-2 confirmation to take risky actions (and allowing human override only with much more friction and/or time delay) is much safer than fully relying only on eithe...

more AI Verified source (Apr 2, 2026)

added 5mo ago