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Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, discussed AI and humans on Farcaster, saying we don’t yet know whether current AI (LLMs plus agents and robotics) is merely another technological wave or the final wave that will eventually replace pretty much everything humans can do.
This is the big question Buterin keeps circling back to. He says people tend to judge humans and AI on just one thing (such as intelligence or productivity), but it’s not the right way to look at the current situation. Instead, he emphasizes that both sides have lots of different skills, where some match up, and others don’t. He believes the real question is how much they’ll eventually overlap.
Ethereum’s co-founder thinks that if AI eventually stalls before replacing every human capability, then society will change dramatically, with humans remaining in a central role.
People Who Leverage AI vs. Those Who Don’t
Buterin’s post offers an interesting perspective, which also points to the possibility that AI could become a productivity amplifier rather than simply taking over human jobs entirely.
At the moment, a large portion of advanced AI functions as a helper for experienced professionals. Someone who understands prompting, automation, AI agents, coding assistants, research workflows, and double-checking results can often accomplish several times more work than someone performing the same tasks manually.
This creates a growing gap between those who use AI and those who don’t.
Notably, Axios (a news website and media company) recently broke down a new kind of class divide forming around AI, putting people into three groups: those who have it, those who don’t, and those who don’t even know about it.
Axios’ take is that the top-tier users are already starting businesses, building companies, writing code, and automating all sorts of complex tasks, while most everyday users still think of AI as a smarter search engine or chatbot.
Adapting to the AI Shift
What’s interesting is that some researchers say AI won’t actually get rid of jobs, but will shift what people do. As opposed to creating things from scratch, humans will spend more time checking and confirming what AI produces.
MIT Sloan’s Christian Catalini recently pointed out that AI can churn out high-quality work for next to nothing, while humans take time and effort to verify things.
As it stands now, those who make the effort to learn how to work with AI today could end up with a real edge down the road. On the flip side, those who ignore the technology might get left behind, not because the machines will take their jobs, but because everyone else who uses AI will be able to get significantly more done in less time.
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