{"id":252093,"date":"2025-11-08T23:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T23:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/252093\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T23:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T23:36:13","slug":"palantir-ceo-says-a-surveillance-state-is-preferable-to-china-winning-the-ai-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/252093\/","title":{"rendered":"Palantir CEO Says a Surveillance State Is Preferable to China Winning the AI Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palantir CEO Alex Karp talks so much that you\u2019d think that he just likes the sound of his own voice\u2014though you wonder if he actually hears what he\u2019s saying.<\/p>\n

The subject of the recently published Michael Steinberger book \u201cThe Philosopher in the Valley<\/a>\u201d popped onto The Axios Show<\/a> this week to talk about all kinds of things, in part because it seems like the wheels in his brain turn faster than his mouth can get the words out. But it\u2019s some of his clearly prepared and repeated lines that are the most eye-roll-inducing.<\/p>\n

For instance, when asked by Axios\u2019s Mike Allen, \u201cWhat the hell is Palantir?\u201d Karp answered, \u201cWe are growing the GDP of the US. We are the part of the GDP\u2026 of the AI economy where things are useful.\u201d Okay! That is the description of a company, for sure.<\/p>\n

Karp\u2019s been hammering the GDP thing lately, considering he brought it up during his appearance on CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box\u201d<\/a> earlier this week. There, in a bit of a rambling response to Michael Burry\u2019s decision to short Palantir<\/a>, Karp suggested that investors should just get on board with his company because \u201cMost of the GDP growth in this country is because of AI.\u201d He\u2019s not wrong, but he also seems to view that as a good thing\u2014that AI is inevitable and essential and everyone should just get on board, rather than there being any chance we\u2019re currently in the middle of a speculative gold rush that is artificially inflating economic growth metrics and will inevitably bottom out.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to read Karp\u2019s view of his own company as essential\u2014to the government, to the world, to pretty much everyone\u2014which has become something of a theme from AI company executives<\/a> as of late. And there\u2019s no denying he\u2019s a very dedicated hype man for his company. On CNBC, he called it \u201cone of the greatest businesses in the world,\u201d and said it\u2019s \u201cdoing a noble task.\u201d On Axios, he chose a slightly different dialect to express that, calling Palantir \u201cthe most baller, interesting company on the planet,\u201d with a \u201cballer product\u201d and \u201cballer culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

At his core, he seems to feel that Palantir not only can be key to maintaining American exceptionalism, but that it has to be. In his letter to investors<\/a> after the company\u2019s third-quarter earnings were released, he evoked poet William Butler Yeats\u2019 famous poem \u201cThe Second Coming,\u201d in which he wrote, \u201cThings fall apart; the center cannot hold.\u201d Karp\u2019s riff on the poem was this: \u201cToday, America is the center, and it must hold.\u201d He went on to argue, \u201cIt is and was a mistake to casually proclaim the equality of all cultures and cultural values.\u201d As a reminder, this is supposed to be the head of a software company and not a nationalistic political leader.<\/p>\n

To that end, when Karp was asked by Allen to \u201cgo dark\u201d and talk about what could go wrong with AI, he didn\u2019t really get to the downside. \u201cIt could go wrong in lots of ways, but again, there I would say we need to absorb a lot of risk there because it\u2019s either going to go right and wrong for us or it\u2019s going to go right and wrong for China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked again, more specifically this time, how AI could impact people, he just can\u2019t get there. \u201cNo decision is without risk. And the risk we have to absorb here is going long on this because we\u2019re not doing this in a vacuum. We are going to be the dominant player, or China is going to be the dominant player, and there will just be very different rules depending on who wins,\u201d he said. \u201cSo when people are worried about surveillance, of course, there are huge dangers there, but you know, you will have far fewer rights if America\u2019s not in the lead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basically, we might completely destroy our economy, our culture, our sense of privacy and individuality, our sense of pride in contributing to our communities\u2014but we\u2019ll be damned if we let anyone else do it to us.<\/p>\n

As a side note, Karp seems to think most people\u2019s concern with surveillance is that they are going to get caught cheating for some reason. For instance, when giving an example of what he thinks is a valid skeptical question to ask about what Palantir is doing, he said, \u201cIs this product being used to take away my right to go have a hot dog with a coworker I\u2019m flirting with while being married? Which, honestly, I think is the god-given right of people in this country.\u201d He later brings this up again, saying that most surveillance technology isn\u2019t determining, \u201cAm I shagging too many people on the side and lying to my partner?\u201d Your guess is as good as any as to what that\u2019s all about.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when Karp does finally get to the idea of existential risk brought about by the proliferation of AI, he says the primary risk is \u201csocial instability.\u201d Pressed into describing what forms that might take, Karp describes \u201cPretty crazy populist movements that obviously make no sense, like the government is going to run grocery stores.\u201d<\/p>\n

So there are your two paths. You can choose the one where AI is integrated into every part of your life, get forced into increasingly narrow pathways for your education and work, and accept an all-seeing surveillance state as a trade-off for \u201csafety\u201d from an unseen enemy. Or you can have your local government address affordability problems by opening grocery stores in food deserts and selling goods at wholesale prices. Tough call, but it\u2019s clear what side Karp has picked. It happens to be the one he profits from. Go figure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Palantir CEO Alex Karp talks so much that you\u2019d think that he just likes the sound of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,101873,1108,733,4308,4340,37313,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-252093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alex-karp","10":"tag-artificial-intellience","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-emerging-technologies","14":"tag-palantir","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}