Vitalik Buterin backs Moonshot AI's decision to strip hacking skills from Kimi K3.1 Pro model

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin supports Moonshot AI's decision to deliberately remove top-end hacking capabilities from its Kimi K3.1 Pro model, arguing that limiting AI functionality is less harmful than discriminating against users. Moonshot reports the filtered model solved 81% of tasks on its internal exploit benchmark, compared to 90.5% for the unfiltered version. Buterin warns that if the first wave of AI risk goes badly, access could become restricted through KYC checks and surveillance, creating tiered user classes. He also notes that rival models like DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash already achieve 85.7% on the same benchmark, suggesting the capability gap may not be permanent.