Jaan Tallinn | |
---|---|
Born | [1] Tallinn, Estonia | 14 February 1972
Education | University of Tartu (BSc) |
Occupation(s) | programmer, investor, philanthropist |
Known for | Kazaa Skype Existential risk |
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] [6] and the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. [7] [8] [9] [10] Tallinn was an early investor and board member at DeepMind (later acquired by Google) and various other artificial intelligence companies.
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 (~$11,804 in 2022). By 1999, Bluemoon faced bankruptcy; its founders decided to acquire remote jobs for the Swedish Tele2 at a salary of US$330 (~$580.00 in 2022) 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. [11] [6]
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 (~$734 million in 2022). [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 (~$115 million in 2022), and had recalled the loan by 2018. [16]
He is married, with children.
Tallinn is a participant and donator to the effective altruism movement. [20] [21] He donated over a million dollars to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute since 2015. [22] His initial donation when co-founding the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in 2012 was around $200,000 (~$253,273 in 2022). [6]
Tallinn strongly promotes the study of existential risk and has given numerous talks on this topic. [23] His main worries are related to artificial intelligence, unknowns coming from technological development, synthetic biology and nanotechnology. [24] [25] He believes humanity is not spending enough resources on long-term planning and mitigating threats that could wipe us out as a species. [26] He has been a supporter of the Rationalist movement. [27] He has also contributed to Chatham House, supporting their work on the nuclear threat.
Kazaa Media Desktop. was a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequently under license as a legal music subscription service by Atrinsic, Inc., which lasted until August 2012.
Max Erik Tegmark is a Swedish-American physicist, Machine Learning researcher and author. He is best known for his book Life 3.0 about what the world might look like as Artificial intelligence continues to improve. Tegmark is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute. He is also a supporter of the effective altruism movement.
An AI takeover is a hypothetical scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Stories of AI takeovers are very popular throughout science fiction. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.
The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Oxford investigating big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects. It was founded in 2005 as part of the Faculty of Philosophy and the Oxford Martin School. Its director is philosopher Nick Bostrom, and its research staff include futurist Anders Sandberg and Giving What We Can founder Toby Ord.
GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization's budget that is spent on overhead.
A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's existence or potential is known as an "existential risk."
Effective altruism is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, sometimes called effective altruists, may choose careers based on the amount of good that they expect the career to achieve or donate to charities based on the goal of maximising positive impact. They may work on the prioritization of scientific projects, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy initiatives estimated to save the most lives or reduce the most suffering.
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is a research centre at the University of Cambridge, intended to study possible extinction-level threats posed by present or future technology. The co-founders of the centre are Huw Price, Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn.
MetaMed Research was an American medical consulting firm aiming to provide personalized medical research services. It was founded in 2012 by Michael Vassar, Jaan Tallinn, Zvi Mowshowitz, and Nevin Freeman with startup funding from Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. MetaMed stated that its researchers were drawn from top universities, as well as prominent technology companies such as Google. Many of its principals were associated with the Rationalist movement.
Priit Kasesalu is an Estonian programmer and software developer best known for his participation in the development of Kazaa, Skype and, most recently, Joost. He currently works for Ambient Sound Investments and lives in Tallinn, Estonia.
William David MacAskill is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. He is an associate professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford and Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. He co-founded Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours, and is the author of Doing Good Better (2015) and What We Owe the Future (2022) and the co-author of Moral Uncertainty (2020).
Vicarious was an artificial intelligence company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. They use the theorized computational principles of the brain to attempt to build software that can think and learn like a human. Vicarious describes its technology as "a turnkey robotics solution integrator using artificial intelligence to automate tasks too complex and versatile for traditional automations". Alphabet Inc acquired the company in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization with the stated goal of reducing global catastrophic and existential risks facing humanity, particularly existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). FLI's work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, United States government, and European Union institutions.
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is a 2014 book by the philosopher Nick Bostrom. It explores how superintelligence could be created and what its features and motivations might be. It argues that superintelligence, if created, would be difficult to control, and that it could take over the world in order to accomplish its goals. The book also presents strategies to help make superintelligences whose goals benefit humanity. It was particularly influential for raising concerns about existential risk from artificial intelligence.
In January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence calling for research on the societal impacts of AI. The letter affirmed that society can reap great potential benefits from artificial intelligence, but called for concrete research on how to prevent certain potential "pitfalls": artificial intelligence has the potential to eradicate disease and poverty, but researchers must not create something which is unsafe or uncontrollable. The four-paragraph letter, titled "Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: An Open Letter", lays out detailed research priorities in an accompanying twelve-page document.
Existential risk from artificial general intelligence is the hypothesis that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could result in human extinction or an irreversible global catastrophe.
OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization consisting of the non-profit OpenAI, Inc. registered in Delaware and its for-profit subsidiary OpenAI Global, LLC. One of the leading organizations of the AI Spring, OpenAI researches artificial intelligence with the declared intention of developing "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence, which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". OpenAI has developed several large language models, advanced image generation models, and previously, also open-source models.
Effective Altruism Global, abbreviated EA Global or EAG, is a series of philanthropy conferences that focuses on the effective altruism movement. The conferences are run by the Centre for Effective Altruism. Huffington Post editor Nico Pitney described the events as a gathering of "nerd altruists", which was "heavy on people from technology, science, and analytical disciplines".
Pieter Abbeel is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, Director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab, and co-director of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the co-founder of covariant.ai, a venture-funded start-up that aims to teach robots new, complex skills, and co-founder of Gradescope, an online grading system that has been implemented in over 500 universities nationwide. He is best known for his cutting-edge research in robotics and machine learning, particularly in deep reinforcement learning. In 2021, he joined AIX Ventures as an Investment Partner. AIX Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in artificial intelligence startups.
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement. It originated in a 2010 post at discussion board LessWrong, a technical forum focused on analytical rational enquiry. The thought experiment's name derives from the poster of the article (Roko) and the basilisk, a mythical creature capable of destroying enemies with its stare.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Tallinn learned the importance of feedback loops himself the hard way, after seeing the demise of one of his startups, medical consulting firm Metamed.