“我们时代的重要挑战之一”：以太坊创始人 Buterin 呼吁在人工智能和政府风险下加强加密货币隐私

在人工智能和监控技术兴起的背景下，以太坊联合创始人 Vitalik Buterin 提倡加强隐私措施，以确保去中心化保持完整。

世界瞬息万变。人工智能的发展速度超出了我们大多数人的承受能力，几乎重塑了我们生活的方方面面。随着人工智能的崛起，一个日益令人担忧的问题：隐私。

When it comes to cryptocurrency, privacy has always been a bit complicated to say the least. It’s something that’s been debated endlessly — sometimes heatedly — and never really resolved.

In a recent blog post, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on why privacy is more important than ever, implying that it’s about preventing the power from getting into the wrong hands.

正如布特林所指出的，人工智能的进步正在走向一个关键点：社会或许真的会谈论人工智能读取人类思想，这将带来深远的影响。他补充道，未来社会可能面临这样一个局面：人们最私密的数据——思想——将被分析并被用来对付他们。

“人工智能正在大幅提升集中式数据收集和分析的能力，同时也极大地扩展了我们自愿共享的数据范围。未来，脑机接口等新技术将带来更多挑战：我们或许真的会谈论人工智能读懂我们的心思。”

维塔利克·布特林

“定义我们时代的挑战”

这不仅仅关乎技术本身。Buterin 强调了地缘政治和权力动态带来的风险。他指出，从支付处理商到电信公司，掌握你个人信息的实体不胜枚举。

“In general, policing all of these entities at a sufficient level of rigor that ensures that they truly have a high level of care for user data is so effort intensive on both the watcher and the watched that it is likely incompatible with maintaining a competitive free market.”

Vitalik Buterin

To make matters even murkier, governments aren’t always as trustworthy as they might seem. The Ethereum founder points out that a regime that seems stable and respectful of privacy today might not be so tomorrow.

In an interview with crypto.news, Ari Redbord, TRM global head of policy, former federal prosecutor and senior U.S. Treasury Official, admited that the balance between privacy and security in crypto has become “one of the defining challenges of our time.”

“After 9/11, that debate played out in airports and public spaces — today, it’s happening on blockchains. The goal is to protect the rights of lawful users to transact privately while preventing rogue regimes, scammers, and cartels from exploiting pseudonymity to move illicit funds.”

阿里·雷德博尔

“不是在安全和隐私之间做出选择”

尽管存在风险，但布特林相信目前已经有解决方案。其中之一是零知识证明身份，它可以在不泄露任何个人信息的情况下证明一个人的独特身份。另一个是隐私池，它允许用户在不泄露私人数据的情况下证明他们的资金是干净的。在消费时，用户可以证明他们的货币并非来自已知的黑客攻击或盗窃。布特林补充说，像 Railgun 这样的隐私池已经在使用中。

But that’s not all. The Canadian computer programmer also mentions on-device anti-fraud scanning, which scans incoming messages for scams or misinformation without compromising privacy.

When asked whether privacy-focused technology could be misused by cybercriminals, Redboard said the issue isn’t about choosing between privacy or security, but rather about “building with both in mind.”

“With tools like blockchain intelligence, zero-knowledge proofs, digital ID, privacy protocols, and smart contracts, we can thread that needle and build a financial system that is both open and safe. In fact, it is not a choice between security and privacy when it comes to blockchains, the technology uniquely allows us to have both.”

Ari Redbord

Addressing proof of provenance for physical items, Buterin suggests that by using blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs, customers could track a product’s manufacturing history and its environmental impact without revealing its full supply chain, allowing pricing environmental externalities without publicly revealing the supply chain.

Buterin thinks that, big picture, the “most pressing risk of near-future technology is that privacy will approach all-time lows, and in a highly imbalanced way where the most powerful individuals and the most powerful nations get lots of data on everyone, and everyone else will see close to nothing.” That’s why, he says, backing privacy for everyone and making the right tools open source, universal, reliable, and safe “is one of the important challenges of our time.”