Vitalik Buterin Criticizes AI for Lacking Wisdom Despite Vast Knowledge

Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin said that while AI systems are extremely knowledgeable—able to spot references to almost anything—they lack wisdom, making only surface‑level judgments about what a text is arguing. He made the point during an X debate sparked by a Harvard course that bans devices, where students sought an antidote to AI shortcuts. Buterin noted that AI’s weakness is greatest when encountering new texts that lack extensive human analysis in training data. He has previously warned that AI could undermine key crypto security elements within two years and has built a paranoid mode for AI chats. The comment is relevant because crypto teams routinely feed whitepapers, audits, and governance proposals into AI tools, and a shallow read could miss subtle flaws in smart contracts or token economics.