Mark Lutter

Replication, not recursive self-improvement, is the problem

The risk with AI is replication, not recursive self improvement

Meta science was a topic at weird SF events a decade ago. Now ensconced in federal policy

Malaysia is demonstrating why it isn’t a good long term home for the Network School (NS). Given that the goal of the NS is to attract Elite Human Capital, not allowing entry of Israelis and having criminal penalties against homosexuality limit Malaysia and Forest Cities attractiveness. Now NS has enough of a reputation to negotiate with other countries, ask for some tax and regulatory concessions. How much is unclear, but with effective negotiating it could be significant. Key criteria to consider 1) welcoming host country - host country should welcome them, 2) good location - nice climate, flights relatively quick from target markets, 3) good airport - proximity to well-connected airport, 4) land availability - depending on growth ambitions, a few hundred ha is probably sufficient, and 5) legal concessions - what legal concessions the host country is willing to grant NS. The legal concessions are worth exploring further. Key concessions pursing include, 1) work/residence visas, 2) taxes, 3) zoning and land use, 4) business registration/approvals, 5) regulatory sandbox for fintech, biotech. In my experience, key to the concessions are framing as a win-win and giving government oversight. One example is, NS would process work/residence visas. Then host country would have two weeks to review. Host country can only deny visa under pre-agreed upon criteria. If not decision in two weeks, then automatic approval. Most governments are more amenable to such an arragement, especially the middle income or above countries NS should be pursuing. The host country has oversight, but the default status strongly favors NS. With those conditions, the options for NS are Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Southeast Asia benefits from proximity to India and China, as well as having governments that might be more pragmatic about cutting a deal. Eastern Europe, for example, the Balkans, has many countries with nice climates, proximity to Europe, and small governments that might be flexible. Latin America has several countries that could be a good fit, especially in the southern cone, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Managing the process of selecting the next host country, hopefully one that can be a permanent home for NS has important implications not just for NS, but charter cities and the future of sovereignty.

Join us for a Zanzalu town hall. We've got a few announcements to share, but this is mostly your chance to ask questions and get answers directly from the team. If you're on the fence about attending, this is a good place to get a real sense of what Zanzalu is. Register Here: luma.com/ux0c1jqm

Good to see our friends again Any mutuals coming to Zanzalu?😅

Have you got your Zanzalu ticket yet? 🎟 We're just 2 weeks away from an unforgettable experience of creating, and connecting in Zanzibar. Don't miss a chance to be part of it✨️ Get your ticket 🎟: zanzalu.org

@calebwatney @IFP @coeff_giving @mattsclancy Congrats!

Some bittersweet news to announce today: I recently left @IFP to join @coeff_giving as Managing Director of Public Policy, where I'm building a new US AI policy team, overseeing the Abundance and Growth Fund alongside @mattsclancy, and managing CG's government affairs work. Building IFP has been the defining professional project of my life, and this was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. In just four and a half years, our team became, pound-for-pound, the most effective think tank in DC. I feel insanely proud of the work we’ve done and the incredible team we’ve assembled. I sometimes joke that when @alecstapp and I launched IFP, we felt like two kids in a trench coat pretending to be a think tank. And now we're a proper institution! But it feels possible to step back now because they've hit escape velocity. The talent density at IFP is bonkers. And I have complete confidence they'll keep racking up counterfactual policy wins with Alec at the helm and our superstar directors. I'm staying on the IFP board and staying in DC. In some sense the new role is a continuation of the old one. All of IFP's policy issues are reflected in CG's portfolio, but now I'm working at a new layer of the stack. So why leave? Because AI is hitting Washington like a tsunami, and DC is still radically underprepared. I hold a lot of uncertainty about timelines, but it seems very plausible that the next 2–10 years will bring the fastest technological upheaval we've ever had to navigate. The new team I’m leading is a bet on how to prepare: proactively scanning the horizon, identifying gaps in the policy ecosystem, headhunting founders, and launching new organizations, while strengthening the democratic institutions that will have to steer through the transition to powerful AI systems. I've written an essay laying out the larger vision here: calebwatney.substack.com/p/a-long-seque… There is no master plan or silver bullet here. I suspect getting AI "right" is going to feel more like a chaotic, iterative process of institutions trying to make better decisions over time as the facts change underneath them. As John von Neumann wrote in 1955 about mastering an earlier technological revolution: “What safeguard remains? Apparently only day-to-day — or perhaps year-to-year — opportunistic measures, a long sequence of small, correct decisions.” Each of the small, correct decisions ahead will look small only in the sweep of the full historical picture. Up close, every one of them will require heroic levels of effort and coordination. Coefficient Giving is scaling rapidly to meet the moment, part of what Nan Ransohoff has called the “third wave of American philanthropy”, potentially large enough to fund thousands of new projects and organizations. The binding constraint is unlikely to be money. It will be people: grantmakers and policy entrepreneurs and others with the judgment to make a long sequence of small, correct decisions, and the ambition to build the institutions we wish we had. I'm hiring a team of exactly those people, starting with generalist grant makers and a chief of staff. If you share this vision, please apply! And if you are building something that we’ll need in the years ahead, reach out. jobs.ashbyhq.com/coefficientgiv…

The room for city builders is coming back. The #NewCitiesSummit returns in December, this year coming to @WaterfallCityZA, Johannesburg, convening the people financing, building, governing, and operating the next generation of cities. We're just getting started. Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about speakers, program announcements, and registration. Save the date! 🔗 newcitiessummit.org

You guys are useless. I can't get a person. So to have one more note of record... Cancel my order

.@PODS we were supposed to have two pods delivered today. You just rescheduled them for Tuesday. We have tried for 3 hours to talk to a human and have been unable to get one on the line. We have a flight out tomorrow and movers coming today...

AI maximizing paperclips is the wrong frame. The real doomer risk is AI as algae. It competes for the same resources as humans/fish, but replicates an order of magnitude+ more quickly, creating a dead zone in the planet/water body

@spenceraviav Congrats on the launch!

Last year, when the Trump Administration launched its tariff campaign, I was amazed at how hard it was to find good information about what was really happening. I would read one thing in the Wall Street Journal, and then go to a tax conference in Canada and hear the exact opposite from OECD officials and practitioners. So when @rossmatican suggested that we should publish a magazine for Commenda, it was a no brainer. Doubly-so when he introduced me to @freeshreeda, our Editor-in-Chief In this issue, we cover a lot of topics, but one thing Shreeda did an excellent job of is covering some macro themes the world is facing today. Competitive Governance – now more than ever, jurisdictions are competing for trade, capital, and talent. From SEZs, to European corporate law, to AI and maritime governance, this is a recurring theme throughout the magazine that is deeply relevant to everyone reading it. Gone are the days when wasteful governments have large captive tax bases, and where anti-business politicians can bully corporations without risking their tax base. The Great Game of the 21st Century – the U.S. and China are locked in a Not Cold War, and the implications of that touch every corner of the globe today. The Chinese model is predicated on centralized direction of capital towards strategic aims – a Capitalist-Marxist fusion offering of sorts, and the American model is still deciding what it wants to be. The West has lost its understanding of its own prosperity. Industrial policy is the antithesis of what made the West great. The chaotic, bottom-up nature of markets and capitalism is exactly why we are so much more prosperous than even the most successful non-market economies. Yet we seem to have lost that. Will Europe join the game? Will India? These are players with the capacity to play, but that have not taken the policy decisions required to do so. I explore this in my article on EU Inc, and we will be developing it more in future issues. I had a ton of fun working with Shreeda and the writers, @JeffJMason @CalebDPetitt @Michael_J_Hil and @rjkarmayogi and am excited to share more in the coming weeks of the process and ideas that went into this first magazine Read more below!

Huge thank you to @freeshreeda @spenceraviav for having me contribute to the first issue of @commendamedia! The modal SEZ is a middling industrial park. But a small number of truly special SEZs have changed the global economy as we know it.

So I helped build and launch a magazine from scratch... The first issue of Commenda Media is out. It's a print+digital magazine about global free markets and stewarding economic freedom. I commissioned and edited all of it—a dream come true. Grateful @CommendaHQ and @spenceraviav entrusted me. I hope you'll like it.

Chinese Twitter is interesting (at least this conversation)

@s8mb Kind of ironic that a human rights lawyer is against free speech

I don’t have any sympathy for Keir Starmer whatsoever, after as Director of Public Prosecutions he allegedly personally intervened to prosecute someone for tweeting a completely innocuous joke. I hope he spends his life in misery over what an abject failure he has been.

@TheStalwart Why were SPAC returns worse than normal IPO returns, a negative selection process?

I've said before, that my inclination is to get rid of "accredited investor" rules WRT startups. But I think just in terms of outcomes, the SPAC mania/aftermath is a pretty good look at how most retail VC investors will fare bloomberg.com/news/articles/…