Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes that one of the applications of artificial intelligence he would like to see is AI-assisted formal code verification and bug discovery.
“The biggest technical risk for Ethereum right now is probably bugs in the code,” he said. Twitter. “Anything that can change the game in a big way would be amazing.”
Unsurprisingly, responses to the tweet were filled with startups claiming to have built the game-changing technology Buterin was so excited about.
One of the applications of AI that I am excited about is formal code verification and bug discovery through AI.
Ethereum’s biggest technical risk right now is probably bugs in its code, so anything that could significantly change the game would be surprising.
— Vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 19, 2024
The Ethereum co-founder hasn’t always seemed optimistic about the impact AI could have on technology or humanity as a whole. In a November blog post titled “My Tech Optimism,” the Ethereum co-founder made the prediction that AI could develop its own “mind” and take on humans as the new apex species.
“This is an extreme claim. “There are many islands of civilization that remain unscathed by the worst-case scenario of climate change, man-made pandemics or nuclear war.” I wrote it at the time. “But if a superintelligent AI decides to turn against us, it could destroy humanity forever, leaving no survivors. “Even Mars may not be safe.”
There was no AI doomsday prediction in the thoughts he shared on Twitter Monday morning. For Buterin, the transition from doom and gloom to optimism continues.
Buterin said in a January blog post that AI could become a “player of the game” in the cryptocurrency market. This is not entirely unprecedented. He has been pointing out for years that trading bots are better than humans at arbitrage, or taking advantage of price discrepancies in the market.
“But AI arbitrage bots are just the first example of a much larger category, and we expect it will soon begin to include many other applications,” he wrote, before talking about AI-based prediction markets.
If Ethereum developers start using AI for code verification and bug detection, they will join a growing sector of the tech industry.
Earlier this month, Microsoft reported a huge boost in Q4 2023 revenue thanks to its multi-year partnership with OpenAI. The company said in its earnings report that AI has been a key driver of its success, whether it’s generative AI models, code analysis, image generation or visual recognition.
Quick note: Microsoft uses fiscal years, not calendar years, for its earnings. Therefore, the second quarter of 2024 ended on December 31, 2023.
“It was a record quarter driven by the continued strength of Microsoft Cloud, which exceeded $33 billion in revenue, a 24% increase,” CEO Satya Nadella said during Microsoft’s second-quarter earnings conference call. “We’ve moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale.”