AI Billionaire on Existential Risk: Jaan Tallinn – #112

Jaan Tallinn is a tech billionaire and founding engineer of Skype who leverages his wealth to mitigate existential risks from artificial general intelligence (AGI). He co-founded the Future of Life Institute and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, while making early foundational investments in frontier AI labs like DeepMind andAnthropic.

Chapter Markers:

00:00 Assessing Current AI Risk Levels

03:28 Inside Self-Sustaining AI Scenarios

09:10 The Global AI Race Dynamics

42:25 Explaining the Techno-Capital Flywheel

45:34 Insider Origins of AI Safety

56:06 Race Politics and Public Fear

01:23:12 Pop Culture, Movies, and Fame

01:30:15 Big Questions for Humanity's Future

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.