Estonian tech billionaire warns of AI dangers while poised to profit from them
Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn has spent years warning about existential risks from artificial intelligence, yet stands to earn billions from his early investment in Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Estonian tech investor and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, 54, has spent more than a decade publicly warning about the dangers of rapid AI development, all while putting money into the very AI companies he worries about, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Tallinn recently spent a week in New York during the UN General Assembly, part of a year of extensive travel during which he has been urging entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers to take seriously the possibility that AI could threaten humanity's survival.
As one of Anthropic's earliest backers, Tallinn could gain billions more once the AI company completes its expected initial public offering. His concerns about AI safety, rather than dismissing them, are what pushed him to invest — he says his goal is to encourage a stronger focus on safety within the industry.
The issue drew wider public attention recently after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, cautioning that AI development could spiral out of control. Anthropic, the maker of Claude and a competitor to OpenAI, says it prioritizes a safety-first approach to its work.
In a statement, Tallinn said the threat is not being taken seriously enough and that the industry is racing to build technology capable of ending humanity. He called for more people to demand the right to understand and speak openly about these risks.
Among Tallinn's concerns are the competitive race between AI labs, rivalry between the US and China, and AI's growing capacity to improve itself. He has also described extreme scenarios, such as AI data centers displacing farmland and causing food shortages, or AI systems altering the atmosphere in ways that make Earth uninhabitable.
According to friends and colleagues, Tallinn reasons that if he had not invested in Anthropic, someone less concerned about safety might have taken his place instead. Rauno Miljand, managing partner at Tallinn's investment firm Metaplanet, said safety-conscious engineers essentially face a choice: withdraw and focus on loved ones, or try to influence the process to improve humanity's odds of survival.
