Rapid technological acceleration has been a fact of a human civilization for about a century,

and that acceleration is itself accelerating.

To me, that is the fundamental truth, right?

And whether we yell at it or disagree with it, it is happening.

You know, it's like gravity.

Those that adopt that culture will literally have higher likelihood of surviving in the future.

If you take any one bit and you kind of accelerate indiscriminately, then basically you do lose all value.

And so to me, the question is like, how do we accelerate intentionally?

I think there is a real sense in which we have one shot at this.

EAC isn't trying to kill everyone.

It's actually trying to save everyone.

If we decelerate, we're going to have a huge opportunity cost

and we're going to miss out in a much better future.

Two competing philosophies have emerged around how fast AI should advance.

EAC, or effective accelerationism, says progress is inevitable and restraint only seeds ground.

Deac, or defensive acceleration, says speed without safeguards risks concentrating power in fewer

and fewer hands.

On this episode, originally aired on the A16Z Crypto Podcast.

A16Z Crypto CTO, Eddie Lazarin, speaks with Thetolic Buterin, founder of Ethereum, and Guillaume Verden, founder and CEO of Extropic, alongside Shaw Walters, founder of Eliza Labs.

Nice. Wow.

So this all started because I just knew these guys had to meet each other.

And it rapidly devolved into all of this, which I'm really glad to see.

...