Education
Vassar entered college at age seventeen, and has a bachelor"s degree from Penn State in biochemistry, as well as an Master of Business Administration from Drexel University.
Vassar entered college at age seventeen, and has a bachelor"s degree from Penn State in biochemistry, as well as an Master of Business Administration from Drexel University.
His career has focused on the prevention of global catastrophic risk from emerging technology. He co-founded Sir Groovy, an online music licensing business that provided cheap music from independent labels to television and film producers. After several meetings, Yudkowsky convinced Vassar that existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence was a more serious threat than nanotechnology.
Vassar eventually became president of the from January 2009 until January 2012, when he resigned his position to found As president of MIRI, Vassar advocated the importance of Friendly Artificial Intelligence, published research papers, developed software, and ran the annual Singularity Summit, at which he also gave talks.
He also contributed to a 2009 report on artificial intelligence by Forbes Magazine. After resigning, Vassar remained on the MIRI board of directors.
According to Vassar, his plan for was to start with a focus on wealthy patients, with an initial product costing up to $250,000, before developing a more affordable, mass-market product by using artificial intelligence in place of manual research. The team Vassar hired for included several researchers from MIRI, and its associated website Less Wrong.
After went out of business, he became an advisor to Nanotronics Imaging, a startup by scientist Matthew Putman.