Jaan Tallinn (born 14 February 1972) is an

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busi ...

computer programmer and investor known for his participation in the development of

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debi ...

and file-sharing application

FastTrack FastTrack is a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol that was used by the Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and Morpheus file sharing programs. FastTrack was the most popular file sharing network in 2003, and used mainly for the exchange of music mp3 files. The ne ...

/ Kazaa. Jaan Tallinn is a leading figure in the field of existential risk, having co-founded both the

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk 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 (Be ...

(CSER), and the

Future of Life Institute The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization that works to reduce global catastrophic and existential risks facing humanity, particularly existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The Institute's work is ma ...

Life

Jaan Tallinn graduated from the

University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

in 1996 with a BSc in

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

with a thesis that considered travelling interstellar distances using warps in space-time. Tallinn founded Bluemoon in Estonia alongside schoolmates

Ahti Heinla Ahti Heinla (born 2 May 1972) is an Estonian computer programmer and businessman. He is one of the developers of Skype. He was also an organizer of Let's Do It 2008, a civic action with 50,000 volunteers participating in cleaning up the countr ...

and

Priit Kasesalu Priit Kasesalu (born 10 April 1972) 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 ...

. 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. By 1999, Bluemoon faced bankruptcy; its founders decided to acquire remote jobs for the Swedish

Tele2 Tele2 AB is a Swedish telecommunications operator headquartered in the Kista Science City, Stockholm, Sweden. It is a major telephone operator in Sweden, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Tele2 also has a 25% share in T-Mobile Netherland ...

at a salary of US$330 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 Janus Friis (; born 26 June 1976) is a Danish entrepreneur best known for co-founding the file-sharing application Kazaa, and the peer-to-peer telephony application Skype. In September 2005, he and his business partner Niklas Zennström sol ...

(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 eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

. In 2014, he invested in the reversible debugging software for app development

Undo Undo is an interaction technique which is implemented in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document, reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs, such as graphic processing, undo will negate the las ...

. He also made an early investment in

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, after Google's restru ...

which was purchased by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

in 2014 for $600 million. Other investments include Faculty, a British AI startup focused on tracking terrorists, and Pactum, an "autonomous negotiation" startup based in California and Estonia. He is married, with children.

Other tenures

* Member of the Board of Sponsors of the

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists The ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'' is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. The ''Bulletin'' publishes conte ...

* Former member of the Estonian President's Academic Advisory Board. * Co-founder of the personalized medical research company

MetaMed MetaMed Research was an American medical consulting firm aiming to provide personalized medical research services. It was founded in 2012 by Michael Vassar (previously of the Singularity Institute), Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype and Kazaa ...

. Tallinn participates in the

effective altruism Effective altruism is a 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, ca ...

movement and donated $604,500 to the effective altruism associated

Machine Intelligence Research Institute The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artif ...

since 2015. In addition, his initial donation, in 2012, when co-founding the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk was around $200,000.

Views

Tallinn strongly promotes the study of existential risk and has given numerous talks on this topic. His main worries are related to

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

, unknowns coming from technological development, and biological risk. He believes humanity is not spending enough resources on long-term planning and mitigating threats that could wipe us out as a species. He has been a supporter of the Rationalist movement. He has also contributed to

Chatham House Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institute headquartered in London. Its stated mission is to provide commentary on world events and offer solutions to global challenges. It is ...

, supporting their work on the nuclear threat.

References

External links

Interview Series with Jaan Tallinn

Ambient Sound Investments - Jaan Tallinn's Profile

Bluemoon Interactive

Jaan Tallinn's Metamed Profile

Jaan Tallinn does a Reddit AMA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tallinn, Jaan 1972 births Living people Estonian computer programmers People from Tallinn University of Tartu alumni Estonian transhumanists Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 5th Class Skype people