EP 72: Jaan Tallinn (Co-Founder, Skype) on Lessons from Skype, Giving SBF $100M & Investing in AI

Jaan Tallinn is the Co-Founder of Skype and one of the most prominent voices in AI safety. After co-founding Skype he begun to delve into the world of AI safety and strongly holds the position that humans can not motivate AI and that action must be taken. Jaan initiated the 6-month pause on AI that was co-signed by Elon Musk. Nonetheless he's invested in some of the most influential AI companies like DeepMind and Anthropic.

On this episode he shares why he invests in AI despite his views on safety, the insights he gained from founding Skype and his first impression meeting SBF in the Bahamas. 

(0:00) Intro 

(0:54) Jaan's journey with crypto 

(2:49) Investing in SBF 

(8:08) Entrepreneurial journey to Skype 

(15:11) Skype's immediate rise to popularity and mistakes along the way 

(22:15) Meeting Eliezer Yudkowsky 

(25:11) The Center for Existential Risk in the Future of Life Institute 

(31:05) Having a seat at the table by investing in artificial intelligence 

(37:24) Having an entrepreneur say no to you 

(41:59) The process of the DeepMind sale and the ethics board 

(45:58) The risk of artificial intelligence today 

(1:04:43) What was that unnerving about GPT four versus GPT three? 

(1:07:02) Jaan's memo on AI safety 

(1:16:00) What percentage likelihood do you think we're on a path to extinction? 

(1:22:18) What's a piece of conventional wisdom around startups or investing that you disagree with today?

Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky

Produced: Rashad Assir

Executive Producer: Josh Machiz

Music: Griff Lawson
 

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About the Show

Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.

Executive Producer: Rashad Assir

Producer: Leah Clapper

Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky

Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1

Follow on Socials

📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow

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🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow

About the Show

Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.

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