Neurodiverse people deserve to have public advocates. They also deserve better ones than Alex Karp. Just about every time the CEO of Palantir has spoken publicly in the last year or so (and he speaks publicly *a lot*) he\u2019s made a point of bringing up neurodivergence. But he talks about it in ways that are frankly getting pretty weird.<\/p>\n
During a recent appearance on the Technology Business Programming Network<\/a> (TBPN), he said artificial intelligence is going to upend much of the current jobs market, and the path to employment, in his view, is going to be extremely narrow. \u201cThere are basically two ways to know you have a future,\u201d Karp said. \u201cOne, you have some vocational training. Or two, you\u2019re neurodivergent.\u201d<\/p>\n Neurodiverse people deal with all sorts of variations on neurology that have historically labeled them as \u201cother.\u201d Conditions like autism, ADHD, or dyslexia\u2014the latter of which Karp has openly discussed his personal experiences with\u2014paired with education systems and places of employment unequipped to accommodate some of the challenges that neurodiverse people face, have created an environment in which people with developmental disabilities are often underemployed<\/a> despite their capabilities, and they often deal with discrimination<\/a>. So it would be great if neurodiverse folks got a fairer shake in the workplace.<\/p>\n But Karp\u2019s suggestion doesn\u2019t seem to be that neurodiverse people are equally deserving of opportunity. He\u2019s instead seemingly inching closer and closer to something like neurodivergent supremacy<\/a>. He\u2019s not the only voice in tech to explore this idea, either. Elon Musk has credited<\/a> autism as a driving force for his own success, and Peter Thiel has called<\/a> Asperger\u2019s syndrome \u201ca plus for innovation and creating great companies.\u201d Every time guys like these suggest that they are more \u201crational\u201d because they don\u2019t give into the \u201cweakness\u201d of empathy<\/a>, they\u2019re playing into some pretty gross stereotypes that emanate from this type of thinking<\/a>.<\/p>\n