Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has put forth the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can facilitate the development of better governance strategies within decentralized organizations. He emphasized that the main obstacles in democratic and decentralized governance modes like DAOs stem from insufficient voter engagement.

Buterin pointed out on X (formerly Twitter) that the typical approach to overcoming low participation—delegation—often results in a small elite making decisions while the broader group remains voiceless.

“The usual solution, delegation, is disempowering. It leads to a small group of delegates controlling decision-making while their supporters, after they hit the delegate button, have no influence at all,” he expressed, addressing a core issue in governance systems.

It’s reported that participation rates in DAOs hover between 15% and 25%, a statistic indicative of potential centralization and ineffective decision-making.

AI-Powered Assistants for Voting

Buterin suggests that personal assistants powered by large language models (LLMs) could overcome the attention deficit by offering pertinent information for voting.

“If a governance mechanism depends on you to make a large number of decisions, a personal agent can perform all the necessary votes for you, based on preferences that it infers from your personal writing, conversation history, direct statements,” he stated.

Furthermore, Lane Rettig, another researcher from the Near Foundation, discussed last year a similar concept involving AI digital twins that execute votes for DAO members to increase engagement.

Preserving Privacy

Buterin raised another crucial issue where governance decisions must often take sensitive information into account. He proposes that privacy can be maintained by letting the LLM analyze private data without exposing it to the user.

Buterin concluded by emphasizing the importance of user privacy while utilizing personal information in decentralized governance systems.