{"id":596673,"date":"2026-05-21T19:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/596673\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T19:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:14:09","slug":"met-palantir-row-goes-to-heart-of-how-public-services-should-use-ai-metropolitan-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/596673\/","title":{"rendered":"Met Palantir row goes to heart of how public services should use AI | Metropolitan police"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s bot v bobby. The row over whether the controversial US AI company Palantir should be paid \u00a350m to help the Metropolitan police<\/a> goes to the heart of how public services will be delivered in the coming years.<\/p>\n

A similar dynamic is playing out in hospitals, schools and town halls, but right now police chiefs are turning to AI to escape a fiscal bind. The UK\u2019s largest police force is shrinking; a \u00a3125m funding shortfall means it faces cutting 1,150 posts. Scotland Yard wants to use AI to deploy Palantir\u2019s systems to comb through human intelligence reports, email caches, phone records and the rest of the torrent of digital evidence trail left by 21st century crime.<\/p>\n

The implication is clear \u2013 AI is now seen as a plausible alternative for at least some human labour in policing and is on its way to becoming a mainstay of the national security apparatus. Human police officers deal with some of society\u2019s most vulnerable people, and also some of the most confidential data and sources. The police want AI to do it too.<\/p>\n

Scotland Yard is not an outlier in looking at AI. Forces such as Bedfordshire and Leicestershire have used Palantir tech. Despite trying to keep out of the Palantir row by calling it an \u201coperational matter for the Met and mayor of London\u201d, the Home Office is setting the pace. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, in January called for police to \u201cramp up use of AI\u201d and to adopt the technology \u201cat pace and scale\u201d.<\/p>\n

Labour has set up a national centre called Police<\/a> AI and is deploying AI as an agent of efficiency in the NHS, the military and the justice system, but the problem is this: the government doesn\u2019t have its own AI systems and the companies that could help are increasingly controversial with the public and politicians.<\/p>\n

Sadiq Khan\u2019s stated reason for blocking the Met\u2019s Palantir deal was a \u201cclear and serious breach\u201d of procurement rules, but politics lies not far behind. He has also cited \u201cconcerns about using public money to support firms who act contrary to London\u2019s values\u201d. Palantir\u2019s leaders, such as its co-founder Peter Thiel and its chief executive Alex Karp, have a knack for controversial statements. Thiel said the NHS makes people sick. Karp recently called<\/a> the disarmament of Germany and Japan after the second world war an \u201covercorrection\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many US AI providers find themselves tainted in the public mind by a general distrust of \u201cbig tech\u201d, a term for concentrated power backed by vast lakes of private capital and often bending the knee to Donald Trump. Palantir, with its contracts for Trump\u2019s ICE immigration crackdown<\/a>, Israel\u2019s military and the US defence department, has become a poster-child for what many in the public and parliament fear is big tech\u2019s dark side.<\/p>\n

When it recently tried to prove its worth by providing an AI-enabled surveillance system to root out corrupt police officers<\/a> at Scotland Yard, the rank and file were appalled, calling it \u201cBig Brother\u201d and saying it caused sleepless nights. The Metropolitan Police Federation, called this \u201cunchecked use of a controversial AI provider to spy on every single one of our colleagues \u2026 not proportionate, just or proper\u201d. It will take some time for the Yard\u2019s top brass to rebuild trust with the rank and file, the police union warned.<\/p>\n

Where are the alternatives to using an AI system provided by one of the huge tech companies like Palantir? Police leaders are understood to have concluded there Palantir was the only company that could provide what it needed. One Scotland Yard insider said there were smaller British firms that could provide aspects of the service Palantir promises, albeit on a piecemeal basis.<\/p>\n

Palantir has a far greater range of tools than most competitors, said Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey\u2019s computer science research centre. British companies cannot yet compete, but, he said, AI is \u201cbecoming part of the critical infrastructure and we need to have a degree of independence on it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the expertise,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is needed is the development of the businesses. That\u2019s where Palantir won big. They had [US] government funding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s bot v bobby. The row over whether the controversial US AI company Palantir should be paid \u00a350m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-596673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596673","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=596673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}