ChainThink report, March 13: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a public statement clarifying his relationship with the Future of Life Institute (FLI) and his position on AI risk issues.

Vitalik stated that in 2021, he passively received a large amount of SHIB and other meme coins, with the nominal value reaching over $1 billion at its peak. He subsequently donated half to CryptoRelief and the other half to FLI, originally expecting FLI to liquidate only between $10 million and $25 million. However, FLI actually liquidated approximately $500 million (the same applies to CryptoRelief).

Vitalik noted that FLI underwent an internal strategic shift afterward, prioritizing large-scale political action as its primary approach—markedly diverging from its original mission. He expressed concern that deploying massive capital pools to influence political processes may lead to unintended consequences and could evolve into authoritarian solutions, such as restricting open-source AI to elevate a single "correct" institution to dominance. Such approaches carry significant backlash risks.