Jaan Tallinn Explained

Jaan Tallinn
Birth Date:14 February 1972[1]
Birth Place:Tallinn, Estonia
Education:University of Tartu (BSc)
Known For:Kazaa
Skype
Existential risk
Occupation:programmer, investor, philanthropist

Jaan Tallinn (born 14 February 1972) is an Estonian billionaire computer programmer and investor[2] [3] known for his participation in the development of Skype and file-sharing application FastTrack/Kazaa.[4]

Jaan Tallinn is a leading figure in the field of existential risk, having co-founded both the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom[5] and the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.[6] [7] [8] [9] Tallinn was an early investor and board member at DeepMind (later acquired by Google) and various other artificial intelligence companies.

Life

Jaan Tallinn graduated from the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1996 with a BSc in theoretical physics with a thesis that considered travelling interstellar distances using warps in spacetime.

Tallinn founded Bluemoon in Estonia alongside schoolmates Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu. Bluemoon's Kosmonaut became, in 1989 (SkyRoads is the 1993 remake), the first Estonian game to be sold abroad, and earned the company US$5,000 (~$ in). By 1999, Bluemoon faced bankruptcy; its founders decided to acquire remote jobs for the Swedish Tele2 at a salary of US$330 (~$ in) each per day. The Tele2 project, "Everyday.com", was a commercial flop. Subsequently, while working as a stay-at-home father, Tallinn developed FastTrack and Kazaa for Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (formerly of Tele2). Kazaa's P2P technology was later repurposed to drive Skype around 2003. Tallinn sold his shares in Skype in 2005, when it was purchased by eBay.[10] [11]

In 2014, he invested in the reversible debugging software for app development Undo.[12] He also made an early investment in DeepMind which was purchased by Google in 2014 for $600 million (~$ in).[13] Other investments include Faculty, a British AI startup focused on tracking terrorists,[14] and Pactum, an "autonomous negotiation" startup based in California and Estonia.[15]

According to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, Tallinn loaned Sam Bankman-Fried about $100 million (~$ in), and had recalled the loan by 2018.[16]

He is married, with five children.[17]

Other tenures

Tallinn is a participant and donator to the effective altruism movement.[21] [22] He donated over a million dollars to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute since 2015.[23] His initial donation when co-founding the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in 2012 was around $200,000 (~$ in).[11]

Views

Tallinn strongly promotes the study of existential risk and has given numerous talks on this topic.[24] His main worries are related to artificial intelligence, unknowns coming from technological development, synthetic biology and nanotechnology.[25] [26] He believes humanity is not spending enough resources on long-term planning and mitigating threats that could wipe us out as a species.[27] He has been a supporter of the Rationalist movement.[28] He has also contributed to Chatham House, supporting their work on the nuclear threat.

His views on the AI alignment problem have been influenced by the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Tallinn recalls that "the overall idea that caught my attention that I never had thought about was that we are seeing the end of an era during which the human brain has been the main shaper of the future".[29] He says he's yet to meet anyone working at AI labs who thinks the risk of training the next-generation model "blowing up the planet" is less than 1%.[30]

When employees of OpenAI left to form Anthropic, primarily out of concerns that OpenAI was not focused enough on AI safety, Tallinn invested in the new company. However, he was unsure if he had made the right decision, arguing that "on the one hand, it’s great to have this safety-focused thing. On the other hand, this is proliferation". Tallinn praised Anthropic for having a greater safety focus than other AI companies, but said "that doesn’t change the fact that they’re dealing with dangerous stuff and I’m not sure if they should be. I’m not sure if anyone should be”.[31]

In March 2023, Tallinn signed an open letter from the Future of Life Institute calling for "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4",[32] [33] and in May, he signed a statement from the Center for AI Safety which read "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war".[34] [35]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Jaan Tallinn, Curriculum Vitae. Tartu Ülikool Sihtasutus. 6 September 2013. May 2012. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20131206124751/http://sihtasutus.ut.ee/lahemalt-sihtasutusest/juhtimine/noukogu/jaan-tallinn/. 6 December 2013.
  2. News: Jaan Tallinn at Ambient Sound Investments. 30 October 2016. University of Cambridge.
  3. News: Billionaires bet on Brussels to save them from AI singularity. 9 August 2022. Politico.
  4. Web site: 'Building AI is like launching a rocket': Meet the man fighting to stop artificial intelligence destroying humanity . 2023-08-20 . ZDNET . en.
  5. News: Humanity's last invention and our uncertain future. Lewsey . Fred . 25 November 2012 . Research News . . 28 January 2013.
  6. Web site: Future of Life Institute.
  7. Web site: Elon Musk Donates $10M To Make Sure AI Doesn't Go The Way Of Skynet . Mashable . 2015 . 21 Jun 2015.
  8. Web site: Elon Musk spends $10 million to stop robot uprising (+video) . Christian Science Monitor . 2015 . 21 Jun 2015.
  9. Web site: Elon Musk: Future of Life Institute Artificial Intelligence Research Could be Crucial . Bostinno . 5 Jun 2015.
  10. News: "How can they be so good?": The strange story of Skype . 29 March 2019 . Ars Technica . 3 September 2018 . en-us.
  11. News: Hvistendahl . Mara . Can we stop AI outsmarting humanity? . 29 March 2019 . The Guardian . 28 March 2019.
  12. Web site: Skype Co-Founder Jaan Tallinn Backs Reversible Debugging Startup Undo Software. TechCrunch. en-US. 2019-09-10.
  13. Web site: The Skype Mafia: Who Are They And Where Are They Now?. Shead. Sam. Forbes. en. 2019-09-10.
  14. News: Field . Matthew . Boland . Hannah . Guardian venture arm invests millions in terrorist tracking AI start-up . 31 March 2020 . The Telegraph . 29 November 2019.
  15. News: Williams . Joe . Walmart is about to let machines negotiate contracts with some suppliers, and it's a glimpse into the future of supply chains in a post-coronavirus world . 31 March 2020 . Business Insider . 2020.
  16. News: Zuckerman . Patricia Kowsmann, Vicky Ge Huang, Caitlin Ostroff, and Gregory . Troubles at Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Began Well Before Crypto Crash . 2023-01-02 . Wall Street Journal . 31 December 2022 . en-US.
  17. News: Kleeman . Jenny . 2024-05-25 . America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’ . 2024-05-26 . The Guardian . en-GB . 0261-3077.
  18. Web site: Office of the President press announcement . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110514100821/http://www.president.ee/en/media/press-releases/1332-the-presidents-academic-advisory-board-held-its-opening-meeting/index.html . 2011-05-14 .
  19. News: Peter Thiel-backed MetaMed thinks you should have your own on-demand medical research team. Weber . Harrison . 1 March 2013 . TheNextWeb . 4 April 2013.
  20. The solution to saving healthcare systems? New feedback loops. Clarke. Liat. 24 April 2015. Wired.co.uk. 24 May 2015. Tallinn learned the importance of feedback loops himself the hard way, after seeing the demise of one of his startups, medical consulting firm Metamed..
  21. News: Jaan Tallinn - Effective Altruism . en-US . Effective Altruism . dead . 2017-07-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210825165957/https://www.effectivealtruism.org/people/jaan-tallinn/ . 2021-08-25.
  22. News: Skype inventor Jaan Tallinn wants to use Bitcoin technology to save the world . en-GB . The Telegraph . 2017-07-03.
  23. Web site: Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
  24. Web site: Jaan Tallinn on the Intelligence Stairway. YouTube.
  25. News: A Skype founder on biomonitors, existential risk and simulated realities. 31 May 2013. The Wall Street Journal. 2014-05-02.
  26. News: Existential Risk: A Conversation with Jaan Tallinn. 16 April 2015. Edge Foundation, Inc..
  27. News: Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn on surviving the rise of the machines. 26 December 2012. Marketplace. 2014-05-02.
  28. Web site: I'm Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, Kazaa, CSER and MetaMed. AMA.. Reddit. 7 June 2013.
  29. Web site: Pinkerton . Byrd . 2019-06-19 . He co-founded Skype. Now he’s spending his fortune on stopping dangerous AI. . 2024-07-24 . Vox . en-US.
  30. Web site: Barten . Otto . Meindertsma . Joep . 2023-07-20 . An AI Pause Is Humanity's Best Bet For Preventing Extinction . 2024-07-24 . TIME . en.
  31. Web site: Albergotti . Reed . Apr 28, 2023 . The co-founder of Skype invested in some of AI’s hottest startups — but he thinks he failed . Semafor.
  32. Web site: 2023-03-29 . Tech chiefs call on scientists to pause development of AI systems . 2024-07-24 . The Independent . en.
  33. Web site: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter . 2024-07-24 . Future of Life Institute . en-US.
  34. Web site: Lomas . Natasha . 2023-05-30 . OpenAI's Altman and other AI giants back warning of advanced AI as 'extinction' risk . 2024-07-24 . TechCrunch . en-US.
  35. Web site: Statement on AI Risk CAIS . 2024-07-24 . www.safe.ai . en.

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