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akceleracionizmus

in English: accelerationism (effective accelerationism)

The conviction that technology – today mainly artificial intelligence – should not be held back but advanced as fast as possible, because progress solves more problems than it causes.

In plain terms

Accelerationism is not a technology but a worldview: it states that accelerating technical progress is the best thing humanity can do. Its version tailored to AI, e/acc, holds that the sooner more powerful models and independently working agents arrive, the sooner energy will become cheaper, healthcare better, and prosperity greater.

Imagine a car transporting a patient to the hospital on a foggy road. One passenger says to slow down because visibility is poor. The other says to accelerate because every minute of delay could cost the patient's life, and the fog is not as thick as claimed. The accelerationist is the second passenger.

It differs from simple technological optimism in that it views slowdown and strict regulation not as caution but as harm: it believes every wasted year means patients not cured and discoveries not made.

It is worth knowing this term because in debates about AI, this camp is often on one side, and the more cautious camp, which warns of the risks, is on the other.

How it works

1. The starting point is a belief: that technological and economic growth has always improved life in the long term, so accelerating it is a moral duty.
2. This implies that AI risks must be addressed not by stopping, but by more development: errors are fixed during operation and use.
3. Its supporters oppose a temporary halt to development (a moratorium) and strict pre-approval. They prefer open competition, open models, and a multi-player market.
4. In practice, this appears in investment decisions, corporate strategies, and lobbying: more data centers, more energy, faster product releases, fewer regulations.
5. The opposing camp argues that with a very powerful AI, errors may occur that cannot be corrected afterward, so speed alone is not a value.

An everyday example

Who is affected

A common misconception

Limits and risks

• This is a worldview, not a scientific finding: the claim that acceleration will surely end well is belief, not proven fact.
• Watch out for interests: among the loudest advocates for acceleration are many investors and executives who also profit financially from looser regulations.
• The principle of 'we will fix it along the way' works well for an application but does not address harms that are irreversible.
• Various views operate under the label, ranging from sensible innovation-friendly approaches to extreme versions that consider human oversight unnecessary.

Similar, but not the same

• Technological optimism – The optimist believes in the utility of technology but can accept regulation; the accelerationist considers the braking itself harmful.
• effective altruism – The effective altruism branch focused on AI emphasizes risk reduction and caution; the name e/acc was coined as its ironic counterpart.
• Technological singularity – The singularity is a hypothetical future turning point, while accelerationism is a stance on whether the path to it should be hastened.
• defensive accelerationism (d/acc) – Vitalik Buterin's 2023 proposal is a middle path: he is also a proponent of progress, but would accelerate technologies that primarily aid defense and distribute power, and he takes AI risks seriously.
• extreme (militant) accelerationism – In the news, the same word can also refer to far-right groups that would hasten societal collapse through violence; this has nothing to do with the AI debate.

Related concepts

A brief history

The term accelerationism in its current sense was introduced in 2010 by British critic Benjamin Noys, with a critical intent. He used it to label philosophical movements that expected radical social change from accelerating the processes of capitalism and technology; these trace their roots to Nick Land and his circle in the 1990s. The AI-specific e/acc movement was launched in 2022 by pseudonymous Twitter accounts. The most famous was "Beff Jezos," revealed in late 2023 to be physicist Guillaume Verdon, a former Google engineer. The movement became widely known in 2023, partly because venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a similarly spirited Techno-optimist Manifesto in October.

Where things stand

By the end of 2026, the e/acc label itself appears less frequently than in 2023, but its arguments have been incorporated into the vocabulary of Silicon Valley investors and political actors urging regulatory relaxation. The United States' 2025 AI Action Plan explicitly relies on dismantling regulatory barriers and rapid infrastructure building, and in Europe, the debate on simplifying and postponing AI regulations has also intensified. Meanwhile, the debate with the camp prioritizing AI safety remains sharp.

Status: 2026 November

Also known as

akceleracionizmus · e/acc · Effective accelerationism · effective accelerationism · accelerationism · accelerationism

Sources

• Wikipedia: Effective accelerationism
• Wikipedia: Accelerationism
• Marc Andreessen: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto (a16z, 2023)

This entry was machine-edited and has undergone machine expert review; the “In the news” section updates automatically from Agent Age stories.