Jaan Tallinn

Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa who co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the Future of Life Institute, and funds AI-safety work while warning that self-sustaining AI could leave humanity powerless.

Roles

2003 – 2005Founding engineer, SkypeAlso a founding engineer of Kazaa; sold his Skype shares when eBay bought the company in 2005.Source →
2012 – presentCo-founder, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of CambridgeSource →
Mar 2014 – presentCo-founder and board member, Future of Life InstituteSource →
2022 – presentBoard member, Center for AI SafetyAlso a partner at Ambient Sound Investments and an early investor in DeepMind and Anthropic.Source →
2023 – 2024Member, UN High-level Advisory Body on Artificial IntelligenceSource →

On the record

21 May 2026 · Podcast · Manifold (Steve Hsu)
once you have something that is like self-sustaining, once it no longer needs humans to continue existing it's much, much harder to pull the plug
Board member, Center for AI Safety at the time
In the same conversation he says that, absent safety work, "We are probably like 80, 80% doomed or something".
AI Billionaire on Existential Risk: Jaan Tallinn — #112 →
2 May 2024 · Podcast · Manifold (Steve Hsu)
I do think that frontier experiments are completely reckless. … I think the most plausible warning shot that we might get is AI hacking its way out from the data centers that it's being trained in.
Member, UN High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence at the time
Jaan Tallinn: AI Risks, Investments, and AGI — #59 →
30 May 2023 · Statement · Center for AI Safety
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.
Member, UN High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence at the time
Named among the signatories by TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/30/ai-extiction-risk-statement/).
Statement on AI Risk →