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Garrison Lovely Profile picture
@GarrisonLovely
Sep 3, 2024 • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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Seems like more people should be talking about how a libertarian charter city startup funded by Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, and Peter Thiel is trying to bankrupt Honduras.

Próspera is suing Honduras to the tune of $11B (GDP is $32B) and is expected to win, per the NYT 🧵 Image
Basically, the libertarian charter city startup Próspera made a deal with a corrupt, oppressive post-coup govt in Honduras to get special economic status. This status was the result of court-packing and is wildly unpopular. A democratic govt is trying to undo the deal… Image
In response, Próspera is suing the govt for ⅔ of its annual state budget. An op-ed in Foreign Policy states that the suit’s success “would simply render the country bankrupt.” ... foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/24/hon…
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The longer story appears to be (from the Foreign Policy op-ed):
2009: military coup results in a corrupt and oppressive post-coup govt
2011: This govt decrees special “employment and economic development zones,” called ZEDEs ... Image
2012: Honduras’ Constitutional Court finds decree unlawful so Honduran Congress swaps out judges for pro-ZEDE judges
2013: new court rules in favor of ZEDEs
2017: Próspera ZEDE granted official status… Image
Nov 2021: Center-left govt led by Honduras’ first female president Xiomara Castro takes power
April 2022: new govt votes unanimously to repeal ZEDE law… Image
Dec 2022: “Próspera announced that it was seeking arbitration at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) for a sum of nearly $10.8 billion.” (Image is from NYT Mag article: ) ... nytimes.com/2024/08/28/mag…
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Próspera is incorporated in Delaware and has received support from the US ambassador to Honduras and the State Dept, despite Biden’s stated opposition to these kinds of investment-state arbitrations…
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I had never heard of the ICSID, but it sounds like a thought experiment dreamt up by leftists trying to show the absolute worst sides of capitalism... Image
This is what thew new president had to say about the special economic zones: “Every millimeter of our homeland that was usurped in the name of the sacrosanct freedom of the market, ZEDEs, and other regimes of privilege was irrigated with the blood of our native peoples.” ... Image
Próspera is funded by Pronomos Capital, which is advised, among others, by Balaji S. Srinivasan, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who wants to partner with the police to take over San Francisco (some people might call this impulse fascistic).
... newrepublic.com/article/180487…

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So Silicon Valley billionaires are backing a project that is trying to bankrupt a poor country for reneging on a deal struck with people who have been indicted on corruption, drug trafficking, and weapons charges. These same billionaires want to build superhuman AI ASAP... Image
and are vigorously resisting regulation of such technology. If you'd like to see how they'd govern the world with a superintelligent AI, it might be instructive to see how they act now. thenation.com/article/societ…
My good friend Ian MacDougall had a fantastic story on Próspera w/ Isabelle Simpson in Rest of the World a few years back. The roots of this story can be found there. ...restofworld.org/2021/honduran-…
If you enjoyed this, check out my Substack: garrisonlovely.substack.com

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More from @GarrisonLovely

Garrison Lovely Profile picture
Apr 11
12 ex-OpenAI employees just filed an amicus brief on the Elon Musk lawsuit attempting to block OpenAI from shedding nonprofit control.

The brief was filed by Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, who also reps OpenAI whistleblowers.

Here are the highlights 🧵 Image
The main claim is that OpenAI got enormous recruiting benefits from touting its nonprofit control. These people would be able to speak to that better than anyone.

They call for the nonprofit to retain control, saying that it's essential to realizing OpenAI's mission. Image
This part of OpenAI's charter reads differently in light of the FT report today the company has dramatically decreased the amount of time given to safety testers prior to release: Image
Read 19 tweets
Garrison Lovely Profile picture
Mar 19
In an exclusive for @Nature, I report on a paper that AI folks will probably debate for a LONG time.

The key finding: the time horizon of tasks AI can handle is doubling fast. Extrapolating the trend: AIs will be able to handle 1-month tasks by 2029. 🧵

Image
Top AI models crush basically any standardized test you throw at them, but haven't transformed the economy or begun making novel scientific discoveries. What gives?

METR thinks the time horizon metric helps resolve this seeming paradox.

nature.com/articles/d4158…Image
The time horizon metric is meant to improve on existing benchmarks, which usually weren't selected to measure what we actually care about (will this thing save me time/money/labor?). Other benchmarks also often "saturate" in ~1 yr now, making it hard to do multiyear comparisons.
Read 14 tweets
Garrison Lovely Profile picture
Mar 6
Headlines say Elon Musk suffered a loss in his lawsuit against OpenAI this week. But buried in the judge's ruling is a bombshell that could derail OpenAI's entire restructuring plan — and potentially force it to return $6.6 billion to investors. Here's what everyone missed 🧵 Image
Headlines imply this was a loss for Elon, but a closer reading of the 16-page ruling reveals something more subtle — and still a giant potential wrench in OpenAI's plans.

"This is a big win for Musk," says legal expert Michael Dorff.

garrisonlovely.substack.com/p/what-the-hea…Image
Preliminary injunctions are extremely hard to get, so Musk's failure to get one isn't a surprise. What is surprising is that the judge basically says that if Elon had standing, the injunction would be warranted! Image
Read 12 tweets
Garrison Lovely Profile picture
Feb 10
Wow.

OpenAI is attempting to transition to a for profit public benefit corporation. To do so, it needs to take control from the nonprofit board, which needs to be compensated at fair market value. OAI was maybe going to pay <$40B. Musk just made that a lot more complicated! Image
If OAI doesn't complete its for profit transition in <2 years, investors in the October round can ask for their money back.

It's really hard to price the control the nonprofit board (ostensibly) has over OpenAI. The "control premium" is typically 20-30% of the company's value. Image
But it can be as high as 70%.

If OAI gets valued at $300B because of the SoftBank investment, that would come out to $60-210B.

Some argued that you should think of what a rival like Google would be willing to pay for control of OpenAI.

Gift link:
wsj.com/tech/elon-musk…
Read 10 tweets
Garrison Lovely Profile picture
Jan 31
My roommates kept asking me if the AIs can count the Rs in "Strawberry" yet.

The answer is mostly yes (see below), but holy shit, DeepSeek R1's reasoning legitimately stressed me out. It reads like the inner monologue of the world's most neurotic & least self-confident person🧵 Image
Here's the summary of results. The models that get it wrong are mostly older.

(Ofc, this question has become a meme so devs can target it in training. But with the new chain of thought models, you can see the steps they're doing to get the right answer.) Image
DeepSeek R1 thought for 24(!) seconds, correctly counting the letters 5 times before convincing itself it was wrong. See the end of the thread for the full chain of thought. Reading it is a harrowing experience. Image
Read 9 tweets
Garrison Lovely Profile picture
Jan 8
🚨 New piece in @TIME: AI progress hasn't stalled — it's just become invisible to most people. 🚨

I used to think that AI slowed down a lot in 2024, but I now think I was wrong. Instead, there's a widening gap between AI's public face and its true capabilities. 🧵 Image
While everyday users still encounter hallucinating chatbots and the media declares an AI slowdown, behind the scenes, AI is rapidly advancing in technical domains.

(Full piece here: )time.com/7205359/why-ai…
E.g. in <1 year, AI went from barely beating random chance to surpassing human experts on PhD-level science questions. In months, models went from 2% to 25% on possibly the hardest AI math benchmark in existence. Image
Read 16 tweets

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