

A Skype founder on biomonitors, existential risk and simulated realities - norabean
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578513472554236916.html

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norabean
In case you can't view the article, here is the full txt: Article by ALEXANDRA
WOLFE

"As we try to talk by Skype, Jaan Tallinn is fading in and out on my computer
screen. Sitting in his living room in Estonia, he is having trouble with his
connection, which may seem ironic for a co-founder of Skype, the wildly
successful video chat service. But these particular technical difficulties are
not Mr. Tallinn's problem these days. Since Skype was sold for $2.6 billion in
2005, making him tens of millions of dollars, he has moved on to bigger
issues—like extending the span of a healthy human life and saving the species.
And those are just this spring's initiatives.

When the screen finally clears up, Mr. Tallinn comes into view. A youthful
41-years-old, with short blond bangs and fair skin, he could be a poster boy
for his latest venture, MetaMed, which promises customers personalized health-
care research and analysis of their medical conditions.

Health care is a relatively new focus for Mr. Tallinn, who has been interested
in computer science and technology since he was 10. Born in Estonia to an
architect mother and a father who directs for film and TV, he didn't get
access to a computer until he was 14, when the father of one of his
schoolmates selected a group of them to work in his office. There he met the
friends who would eventually join him in developing Kazaa, the file-sharing
application turned music-subscription service, in 2000 and then Skype in 2002.

He launched MetaMed last March after a $500,000 investment from PayPal co-
founder Peter Thiel. So far, the New York-based company has about a dozen
employees and 20 clients, half of them friends who are trying it pro bono. The
idea emerged from another of Mr. Tallinn's goals: "surviving as a species this
century." He has also been developing a new nonprofit called the Cambridge
Project for Existential Risk with two academics.

What risks worry him? "The first one is artificial intelligence," he says.
"The second is the things that technological progress might create that we're
unaware of right now."

He has just read an early draft of a book by his friend Max Tegmark, a
physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arguing that the only
reason nuclear bombs can't be made from instructions downloaded from the
Internet is that the laws of physics luckily make it hard to do. "There's no
guarantee that wouldn't be possible," he says, referring to homemade nuclear
bombs.

His third fear is biological risk. "There could be synthetic viruses that
evolution doesn't even know how to create," says Mr. Tallinn. For all
practical purposes, he suggests, evolution stopped with the advent of gene
technology. "The future of the planet depends much more on technology than
evolution," he adds.

Having five children with his wife of 16 years has made many of these ideas
more concrete for Mr. Tallinn. "When somebody goes all abstract on me ...
saying things like, 'Perhaps humanity doesn't deserve to survive,' I say,
'Look, do you have kids? Do you realize you're talking about the death of your
kids or my kids?" Mr. Tallinn says he's always glad to hear when technology
developers have children because it makes them think in the long-term.

Glancing away from the screen to the trees outside his house, Mr. Tallinn
laments that most people don't take these longer-term risks seriously.

"In general, it seems to me that people in society are bad at dealing with
things that have never happened and overreact to things that have happened and
happened recently," he says. As he notes, more people die slipping in the
shower than in plane crashes, train accidents and terrorist attacks combined.
"Since 9/11, more Americans have been killed by falling furniture than by
terrorists," says Mr. Tallinn.

And these, in his view, may not be humankind's only blind spots. Mr. Tallinn
is open to the possibility that our lives and consciousness are all part of a
computer simulation. "As our computers and technology get better at making
virtual worlds, it's reasonable to expect them to be able to create virtual
worlds that are indistinguishable from the real one," he says. "So if you're
in a single-history universe, with one real one and many simulations, the
chances of being in the simulation are higher than the real thing."

If we are indeed living in a simulation, should we behave differently? "What
we should do depends on what kind of evidence we have that we are in a
simulation ... and then the critical question is why the simulation is being
run." Mr. Tallinn won't say whether or not he believes we are in the real
world or a computerized fake. "Once you're in a simulation you don't even
know—it could be that it's not even you."

At the moment, Mr. Tallinn's virtual presence is getting fuzzy again, and his
image finally fades from my screen. Calling back with his video turned off, he
assures me that he is no pessimist. He looks forward to self-driving cars,
which "might completely change the logistics of civilization." he says. With
MetaMed, he's excited by the prospect of more advanced biomonitors. And then
there's the possibility of cheap gene sequencing.

As Mr. Tallinn sees it, his career, from Skype to MetaMed to the Cambridge
Project for Existential Risk, has followed a progressive arc. He recalls how
he introduced himself at a recent party: "First I saved about one million
human relationships," with Skype, but it "doesn't make sense to save human
relationships if you don't make sure [people] live longer, and then make sure
they don't get destroyed."

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metadept
"Having five children..."

Somehow overpopulation didn't make his list of existential risks? Seems like a
glaring hypocrisy for someone who claims to have an interest in saving the
species.

~~~
gwern
Overpopulation is not an existential risk: it does not kill the entire human
race or permanently curtail/destroy potential. Overpopulation sucks and can
cause serious problem for those affected, but it does not threaten all of
humanity and to some extent solves itself - you can't go beyond the Malthusian
equilibrium.

Not only is overpopulation not an existential risk, it's not even really a
risk: look up the demographic transition.

~~~
metadept
I think it's a very serious issue. Clearly the population will balance itself
at some point, whether by education/moderation or mass-starvation. However, I
believe we have a finite window of opportunity to make a number of critical
scientific and social advancements in order to continue our species' progress
in the next few centuries and beyond. This window is defined primarily by the
availability of materials and energy which are necessary to support
technological development at our current scientific frontiers. Increasing
population, especially in the developed world, consumes resources faster and
thus shortens the span before many critical materials become scarce. Better
extraction and synthesis will likely become available in the future, but first
we need to get there.

I am not arguing that we shouldn't have children at all, but responsibly
limiting our population seems like a critical supporting factor in any
qualitative advancement we want to make as a species. This is especially true
since much of the world doesn't seem likely to do the same any time soon.

~~~
keefe
I think you make some good observations, but I'd wager if you think these
statements through a while longer, you'll adjust your position. Jaan (a single
high fitness human) having multiple children doesn't connect directly to the
real issue of overpopulation. The carrying capacity of the earth (with
efficient use of vertical space) is orders of magnitude large than our current
population. Survival-necessary resources are not scarce. Depletion of scarce
resources causes serious economic and societal impact, but can you name one
irreplaceable scarce resource? We're almost out of oil but tech will
transition to alternatives soon. I worry about byproducts of overpopulation,
like multiple antibiotic resistance bacteria and calcified local optima in
social systems.

