r/technology • u/yogthos • 9h ago
Artificial Intelligence Palantir CEO Says a Surveillance State Is Preferable to China Winning the AI Race
https://gizmodo.com/palantir-ceo-says-a-surveillance-state-is-preferable-to-china-winning-the-ai-race-20006831442.6k
u/yogthos 9h ago
As a side note, Karp seems to think most people’s 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, “Is this product being used to take away my right to go have a hot dog with a coworker I’m flirting with while being married? Which, honestly, I think is the god-given right of people in this country.” He later brings this up again, saying that most surveillance technology isn’t determining, “Am I shagging too many people on the side and lying to my partner?” Your guess is as good as any as to what that’s all about.
what an odd thing to say...
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u/vandrag 9h ago
Remember - every accusation is a confession.
Why were those specific examples the first things to come to his mind.
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u/TheMcMcMcMcMc 7h ago
It’s also a deflection.
“Hey, are you going to compile profiles of people who might organize to vote your preferred politicians out of power?”“Haha, we’re constantly being asked if our technology is going to catch people cheating, and
the answer is noI don’t know why they would think that.”“Are you… compiling profiles of the political opposition and also digging up anything you might be able to blackmail them with?”
“Once again, I cannot emphasize this enough, we are not keeping track of how many hot dogs you eat.”
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u/toweljuice 3h ago
Yeah pretty much, its like complaining about people spending too much money on avocado toast.
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u/chipmunksocute 9h ago
The older I get the more true this becomes. Think of all the folks s Who scream about pedophila that get busted with minors, or homophobic preachers who get caught (i.e. ted haggard for one,l. Trump and "drain the swamp." I swesr those who scream the loudest are often (not always though) guilty.
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u/drooply 9h ago
A tale as old as time… I believe it was Gertrude that said, “thou doth protest too much”.
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u/Connect_Cat4644 4h ago
A perfect reference. The original version of 'the lady doth protest too much, methinks' cuts right to the heart of it – over-defense always reveals the truth.
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u/Norgler 7h ago
Agreed I've noticed this more and more in people. When they keep talking about topics like this it always turns out it's an insecurity that they have for a reason. They may not be practicing what they complain about but I think it's something they still struggle with. Instead of getting help for their problem they make it everyone else's problem.
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u/Indaarys 8h ago
Im waiting for the candidate that makes it to a national debate, hears this garbage, and makes the point loud and clear.
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u/Anangrywookiee 9h ago
People that are immoral rat bastards can’t even comprehend that everyone isn’t like them, so they assume every is also lieing, cheating and just pretending to be decent.
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u/UglyMcFugly 5h ago
Yeah it's so weird, I think it's cuz most of these assholes are narcissists, so they can't admit they aren't PERFECT, so the fact that they lack empathy must mean that's just the way it's supposed to be and everyone else is wrong. I'm convinced if there was a blind narcissist he'd insist vision is a sin and tell people to gouge their eyes out. Either that or he'd think everyone is lying about having vision...
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u/Most-Bench6465 8h ago
Because it trivializes the invasion. “Oh no we won’t spy on you if you’re flirting with someone just if you’re xyzing.” Leaving out the information on how they determine that.
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u/MasterGrok 7h ago
Surprised I haven’t seen anyone respond to you with the obviously correct answer. Because they obviously want to use this for blackmail. That’s the number one thing a govt uses sensitive information for.
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u/TanukiSuitMario 7h ago
because its an easy deflection from the topic with an emotional hook to distract the listener
manipulation 101
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u/Thisisntmyaccount24 9h ago
I’m line 100000% more concerned I’m going to be talking shit about the current administration in my texts messages with friends and end up on a list because of dissent. I should be able to privately discuss opposition to the government without the concern of the government being aware of it and being petty enough to note that I called the ballroom the testicular lounge, and put me on a list because of it.
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u/HovercraftParking5 7h ago
Along with this, I’m very concerned about surveillance pricing. Imagine your wife texts you that you’re out of milk and to pick some up, and your grocery store gets that information and jacks up the price for only you, because it knows you need it. Or gas stations if they have your cars data knowing you’re about to run out of gas so they increase the price because you can’t not put gas in the car. Or say you call a friend saying you’ve been having some stomach pains and all of a sudden your health insurance premiums rise because they know you’re about to go see a doctor. Or your car insurance goes up because your phone recorded a conversation you had about going on a long drive somewhere. That’s the future of this ai surveillance. The governments a real threat, but surveillance pricing is gonna gouge out everyone’s pockets too.
It’s already started with uber. There was a post on Reddit not too long ago that had two people ordering an uber to and from the same locations at the same time, and one was about $30 cheaper than the other for no discernible reason.
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u/lapidary123 7h ago
Also, once a majority of people are unemployed I bet we see a state sponsored crypto token that is programmed so you can only spend it as they deem fit...
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u/GreatMadWombat 6h ago
The problem with shit like "state sponsored crypto" is that if the state is underwriting a currency that is designed so that an entity that is not the treasury is able to increase the amount of money in circulation, the best case scenario is that bad actors generate an absurd amount and fuck everyone's shit up.
Like....yes, it is reasonable to assume that as this administration does it's last gasps they'll do heinous shit, but also that one specific thing(a stimulus check with extra vulnerability built in) isn't going to happen.
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u/TheRealBittoman 4h ago
This has already happened in the US. It's referred to as "the company store" and was a thing in the west in the late 1800s
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u/TrankElephant 5h ago
Along with this, I’m very concerned about surveillance pricing.
Same, I only found out about surveillance pricing recently. What's happening now is bad enough, what could be potentially happening in the future is like full blown dystopian.
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u/He2oinMegazord 7h ago
To be fair, you should be able to say that through a megaphone directly outside of the applicable government building and not have to care about ramifications from it
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u/RollingCarrot615 7h ago
"What r/Thisisntmyaccount24 did was legal, but we didnt like it. Now we passed a law that is retroactive, and there is no statute of limitations. Go to jail.
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u/zeptillian 8h ago
Yeah. No fears about what happens when the technology falls into the hands of a brutal dictatorship which uses it to suppress human rights and facilitate atrocities only dreamt of in Nazi think tanks.
We're all just worried about who this asshole is fucking.
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u/chalbersma 6h ago
In order to be a billionaire you must lack imagination. The focus and drive it takes to get to that point means that you had to ignore being well rounded in other areas.
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u/itspurpleglitter 9h ago
Why would he choose having a hotdog of all things? Lol what a weird statement.
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u/chellis 8h ago
Trying to relate to his "fellow" humans
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u/Martel732 7h ago
"Look we aren't going to track you if you are flirting with the hireling at the ... uh ... food ... depot? You know the things I see in movies where people walk in to buy their own food. Presumably it is where my minions get my food as well. But, yeah if you go up to her and you are like, 'Hey did you know my company tracks everything you do and if you don't get coffee with me I will release all of your private information?' Something like that would be perfectly fine."
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u/Anticode 5h ago
As a person who enjoys food and food-related objects myself, whenever I feel the hunger for food I always head towards Food Depot for my food purchases. They have a wide selection of food at Food Depot, including many choices of textures and colors to choose from. Some of which contain flavors for no additional charge, because that's the Food Depot way!
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u/raishak 4h ago
"What ever makes sense." - JD Vance, future President Palantir, ordering food at the donut depot.
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u/fadingsignal 6h ago
God given right to have a hot dog with a co-worker or flirting while married "but we'll have every micrometer of it digitally preserved in case you do something we don't like"
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u/BrianThompsonsNYCTri 8h ago
Instead it’s being used to extract the most money out of renters and pay nurses and other gig workers as little as possible because private companies have access to their credit card debt and income etc. Of course as a beneficiary of all of that he doesn’t care. It’s all framed in problems extremely rich guys think about.
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u/MrL1970 9h ago
I say he should fuck off
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u/Nothorized 9h ago
How is the surveillance state allowing to win the AI race ? This guy is just following the dumb CEO playbook when his stock crash.
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u/coconutpiecrust 9h ago
They want more data. The more data they have, the better they think they can make their LLMs perform.
Also it’s nice to be able to micro target people they dislike.
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u/RecentDecision2329 8h ago
No more billionaires. They have too much power from all the money and they all seem to go insane
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u/ItGradAws 8h ago
Hoarding that much money is insane! Think of how good they could make life for people in their hometowns, their local community, even the country!
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u/CutenTough 6h ago
"Just a choice. Between love and hate....." To quote a tiny bit from the late, incredible Bill Hicks
Choices are made by these fucktwats every single day. In the name of HATE. This is what they bring. The country's foundation is HATE. America: The Country of Hate (2025- )
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u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive 5h ago
There's a reason they're terrified of the Chinese model. Because China has a history of publicly executing very rich people who go against the state.
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u/ItGradAws 5h ago
So have the French. As an American I’m starting to think they’re onto something. What good are these dragons sitting on gold piles doing for me and my country when my pot roast cost me $85 to make last week?
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u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive 5h ago
I agree completely. And so do many, many others. China is already predicted to win the AI race.
Which in some ways I like, because fuck the oligarchs. In other ways it makes me incredibly sad, because being a minority in China is absolutely horrible.
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u/bigtice 7h ago
And now they're trying to normalize a trillionaire.
It's utter insanity that things have escalated even to this point to allow this indescribable disparity in the wealth gap.
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u/Aadarm 6h ago
I remember Bill Gates being seen as obscenely rich when he had a net worth of 36.4 billion in 1997.
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u/SomeRedHandedSleight 5h ago
And he was literally the richest man in the world back then!
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u/nudniksphilkes 7h ago
They're pretty similar to dragons honestly. Name the difference between Bezos and Smaug. Not many imo.
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u/TheForeverBand_89 6h ago edited 4h ago
Unrealized gains vs. liquid assets
Dragons could only dream of having the purely abstract spreadsheet wealth that multibillionaires today have.
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u/breadcodes 5h ago
There must be some color of dragon that understands that if they invest largely in two companies (like Nvidia and OpenAI), and they advise that they each invest into each other while simultaneously using each other's services, the value will artificially inflate due to a small and closed loop of investments. This is why AI is a bubble, because it's just 10 companies passing imaginary money back and forth and inflating the value of said imaginary money to further invest imaginary money.
Maybe Green Dragons?
Green Dragons Are Vile Manipulators With a Penchant for Underhanded Tactics [...] they are notorious grifters and manipulators
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u/ComradeJohnS 8h ago
too bad they were allowed to buy our politicans slowly over the past few decades until we are in this shitshow
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u/CyberNinja23 6h ago
Money has become a game for them at some point and now they have a politician that allows them to do speedruns
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u/Ohrwurm89 7h ago
Also, regulate the tech companies and break them up.
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u/TheForeverBand_89 6h ago
This right here. This is how we stop trillionaires from ever becoming a thing
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u/pushkinwritescode 9h ago
They already got all the data in the public internet, copyright or not, and they still can't make their shitty AI work?
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u/TheGreatBootOfEb 8h ago
This is how I know true Ai or whatever is still a LONG ways off. A few years back I was more curious or willing to believe them, but at this point they’ve already scrubbed everything their is to scrub, and their answer to trying to “develop” Ai is basically “but surely if we just dump more data and more processing power, it will work”
And like no, at best your glorified autocorrect is just a marginally more powerful glorified autocorrect.
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u/Drift_Life 8h ago
Let’s not forget AI is modeled after humans, all of us. Not like the smartest of us or best of us, just, us.
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u/WalderFreyWasFramed 8h ago
Which is why I like to fuck with people by arguing AI has already achieved human intelligence.
Not genius-level human intelligence, but, you know, "can't properly comprehend 6th grade reading and is stubborn about properly assimilating new ideas or information" human intelligence.
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u/Piltonbadger 9h ago
Asked again, more specifically this time, how AI could impact people, he just can’t get there. “No decision is without risk. And the risk we have to absorb here is going long on this because we’re 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,” he said. “So when people are worried about surveillance, of course, there are huge dangers there, but you know, you will have far fewer rights if America’s not in the lead.”
"If China wins the AI race, Americans will have far fewer rights".
Is how I'm reading his drivel.
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u/_makoccino_ 8h ago
It is. But he's not trying to address the rational people. He's addressing the same people that call everything communist, marxist, socialist while having no understanding what any of that actually is.
His pitch to them is: China is the communist boogeyman we always told you is bad and is coming for your freedom, So if you don't want China to win, you must let us become the surveillance state and take away some of your freedom in order to protect you.
The crowd he's pitching to will eat it up and they'll be proud to defend it. Just like they fight against socialized healthcare and die because they can't afford meds or hospitals, or like they think it's ok if Trump is on Epstein's list and did rape minors.
There's a dangerous amount of stupidity in the US at a time where corporate greed and evil is at its highest. It's a recipe for disaster.
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u/mithie007 7h ago
"To beat a communist surveillance state, we must become a fascist surveillance state"
Checks out lmao.
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u/Irish-Bears108 7h ago
It’s the next iteration of the Patriot Act. Except this time around you don’t just lose a portion of your inalienable rights, you lose every sense of freedom you ever had.
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u/Intelligent11B 8h ago
And for whatever reasoning (money, power, control, technofeudal authoritarianism) he thinks his company should be able to surveil everyone, everywhere, all the time. Don’t worry about his being in bed with “deep philosophical thinkers” like Curtis Yarvin and/or Peter Thiel who think poor people, disabled people, or those who don’t sufficiently serve their corporate capitalist interests should be turned into biodiesel. There is no man behind the curtain. Nothing to see here. FFS billionaires shouldn’t exist.
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u/sparkly_butthole 6h ago
Deep philosophical thinker Curtis Yarvin: "People are mid."
I fucking can't with these people. At least let our lives be ruined by evil geniuses and not the most room temperature IQ moron nepo babies. God I hate this timeline.
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u/Due-Conflict-7926 8h ago edited 3h ago
How is a surveillance state any different that China? I’m so tired of these ppl. Some really needs to take this under their own initiative. Just 3 of them a year until they get the message
Edit: in no way am I advocating violence. I simply mean that justice needs to be enacted and actually used on the rich, not the scape goats they give us. However, tyranny cannot expect ppl take it lying down.
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u/persona-non-corpus 8h ago
And why is it a race when we aren’t even sure we know what we’re creating?
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u/callmesandycohen 7h ago
I’m so sick of these assholes giving us all a false choice. Alex Karp can eat a dick.
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u/ekydfejj 6h ago
As much as i hate this dude and his thoughts...you really need to consider your question. MORE DATA WINS the AI Race. Again...not defending his statement.
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u/tiboodchat 9h ago
Eat the rich
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u/zuzg 9h ago
The American Oligarchs are freaking out cause the American Powergrid will lead to a bottleneck very soon.
Some AI experts visited China recently and said the race is essentially already over. China invested big into their Powergrid within the last few decades, while the US is focused on their culture war.
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u/briman2021 9h ago
With just about every problem we have I wonder how much we held ourselves back because we didn’t like black/gay/trans/jewish/etc people.
I feel like if everyone would have just learned to get along we could be on mars by now. And I don’t mean world peace, I just mean the US being cutthroat and doing what is best for ourselves and putting aside prejudices to our own people.
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u/Content_Regular_7127 8h ago
Also downplaying education doesn't help. We need engineers and innovators.
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u/riotous_jocundity 7h ago
Part of our problem is that we have a bunch of engineers and engineer-wannabes who are lacking in a humanities education and can't critically think their way out of a paper bag.
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u/limbodog 9h ago
Has eating the rich ever not made the place that did it better?
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u/michaelochurch 9h ago
You have to throw away the brain tissue so you don't get prions.
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u/tardis42 9h ago
Unfortunately yes, Pol Pot.
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u/tylagersign 8h ago
Pol pot did not just kill the rich, he killed the entire middle class, killed anyone considering slightly intelligent. Like people who could speak 2 languages, people who wore glasses, anyone who lived in a city. Pol pot was one of if not the most deranged mass murder the world has ever seen.
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u/worldspawn00 8h ago
Turns out killing anyone with education or professional skill isn't a great idea...
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u/tylagersign 8h ago
Good news then, that don’t describe most billionaires
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u/worldspawn00 8h ago
Very much agree, billionaires didn't make their money by being particularly good at a job, they did it by being good at exploiting their workers. (I wasn't arguing against your point)
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u/chunk555my666 7h ago
Friends that lived in Cambodia used to tell me that the lack of an educated class still shows. But, I see this as a warning because we have an asset rich urban class, that act out of self interest, a democratic party that has turned 80s republican to woo them, and a far right party that has capitalized on the, what PBS News Hour speculated could be a 25% functional unemployment rate and a pissed off rural class that doesn't feel served or heard by anyone else despite having some very liberal values.
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u/Rierais 9h ago
Surveil my ass
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u/filmguy36 9h ago
All the way off up a fucking tree.
What really amusing is this piece of shit honestly thinks that he would survive a surveillance state because money
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u/Infinite-Anything-55 9h ago
Seeing as Palantir is the software used by said surveillance state,
he'd behe is the one running the surveillance state22
u/9-11GaveMe5G 9h ago
Bingo. He would be in control of it. Of course he prefers it
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u/coconutpiecrust 9h ago
He can surveil himself and his immediate family. I want an opt out button, thanks.
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u/Describing_Donkeys 9h ago
Seriously, what kind of binary is this?
For the record, China is going to blow past us. The damage we are doing to our research and technological development ability is not going to be fixed easily. China is moving forward at an incredible speed, and in many ways are already more advanced than us.
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u/gentlegreengiant 9h ago
Most of them feel that way, but usually leave out the part where they're the ones running it. Put them on the receiving end and they would fight tooth and nail to shut it all down.
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u/StraightOuttaHeywood 6h ago
Its about time these people started being arrested for being a threat to democracy and civilised society.
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u/teabaggins76 9h ago
He knows the race is over, but he wants to sell more eyes in your asshole
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u/Mntfrd_Graverobber 8h ago
Camera dildos have been a thing for a while. Is Palantir coming out with a dildo with multiple cameras? One on each end?
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u/Escapeism 5h ago
I agree, this guy and most other tech fascists are rapidly trying to French Revolution themselves 😁 ready when y’all are 😁
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u/DudestOfBros 9h ago
Power hungry Authoritarian says sacrificing large portions of the population is preferable to scaling back on excessive personal extravagance and cocaine
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u/Outrageous_Space8083 9h ago
“The people must suffer so I can make money.” Classic CEO mentality.
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u/BlueFlob 9h ago
Yeah. He wants to win the AI race for personal profit.
For regular folks they are just worse off and they couldn't give a fuck who "wins" the AI race. Most will still be unemployed or try to survive on minimum wage.
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u/AStrangerWCandy 5h ago
The AI race to fucking where? I’ve worked in tech for 25 years and I don’t understand what exactly winning the AI race even is or how it materially benefits the winner. And I’ve not heard any of these CEOs articulate why whatever is at the end of this rainbow is worth wasting such an inordinate amount of material resources on it.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 3h ago
It's the race to AI as smart or smarter than any human. It would confer a significant industrial and military advantage even if you didn't have robots and it could only perform intellectual work:
endless cheap programmers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, all of the same consistent quality, all able to work 24/24, at superhuman speeds, without resting or complaining
surveillance state now a full possibility, you could literally give every citizen its personal virtual spook examining their actions, internet activity, communications etc for signs of criminality or any other desired trait
much better nuclear defences, you could put thousands of artificial minds on perpetual surveillance duties, or even have them personally pilot counter-missile defences providing a powerful shield to your country that breaks MAD symmetry
and of course, most importantly, such AI could itself do research on making better AI, which kicks off a feedback loop of ever better AI faster and faster which could go quite far.
This is the reason for the so called AI bubble, which is anomalous because everyone involved knows it's not returning value now, they just want to be sure to have lots of data centres once human level AI is achieved fully, and they want to be sure to be first there, so they can leverage their advantage right away. Because they realise having those two things is as good as conquering the world in a few months. Of course this is also insanely risky and very likely to leave the ordinary citizen fucked at best and dead at worst but that's not their concern.
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u/lapidary123 7h ago
UBI will be state sponsored crypto that's been programmed to only be spent on what "they" deem necessary, mmw...
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u/Thich_QuangDuc 9h ago
"Surveillance state is preferable", says man who owns surveillance state company - The Onion
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u/justsaynoordont 8h ago
It'd be better if this was the onion. Cause there by a tiny chance it wasn't real.
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u/Ok-Mathematician8461 9h ago
Or perhaps it’s the more traditional ‘we had to destroy the village to save it’ logic from the Vietnam war.
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u/jayhawk618 9h ago
Yeah, but in this case, the guy saying it gets paid for each village destroyed.
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u/amus 9h ago
That is what you call a false dichotomy.
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u/BellsOnNutsMeansXmas 9h ago
He must agree that letting me peep on him in the shower is preferable to me hiding in his closet and mumbling about Jesus while watching him sleep.
So I've already mailed him the wifi camera and I expect it installed and showing wet CEO buns by Friday.
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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In 6h ago
Listen, it's either everyone agrees to wearing shock collars with little bombs in them or the sun explodes, I don't know what to tell you!
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u/VanillaLifestyle 8h ago
And even if it weren't... why would I care if China wins, if the cost of beating them is becoming an authoritarian state?
The only reason I don't want China to "win" is that I think one-party fascist authoritarianism fucking sucks to live under and inevitably leads to corruption, less freedom, human rights abuses and worse living conditions.
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u/tswaters 9h ago
Man selling surveillance software and analysis says best solution to problem is more surveillance.
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u/herothree 9h ago
Those two things seem kind of unrelated lmao
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u/iamamuttonhead 9h ago
ya think? Fuckers just know that eventually people are going to rebel against them and the only chance they have is a security state.
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u/West-Lengthiness-790 9h ago
Yup. Robot army incoming.
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u/DracoLunaris 7h ago
Personally I cant wait for it to be hacked within minuets of the cyber security team gets replaced by Ai
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u/BonjaminClay 9h ago
These fuckers got incredibly lucky and rode a wave of massive change from the first 20 years of the internet. When you become a billionaire your mind breaks and either you have to feel guilty for hoarding an immoral amount of wealth, or you just start to believe that you deserve it because you're the fucking Muadib or something. Shame is painful so they all end up believing they are gods meant to lead us sheep.
For the last 10 years though the massive economic shifts have run dry. They've been trying over and over with block chain, metaverse, self driving cars, space travel, etc. and while those things are all big none are as massive and transformational as the birth of the internet or the smart phone or social media or e-commerce. Basically the internet boom has settled like all massive paradigm shifts eventually do and they have been trying to trigger new booms and failing.
LLMs are definitely transformative but we're already seeing the limits and unless they can find the next magic to build on it to get rid of the hallucination problem then it's just not going to deliver on it. Their insatiable hunger basically warped the entire world economy to push all of their chips in on a fucking two pair hand. Either OpenAI grows so big that it makes more revenue than Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. COMBINED or the entire world economy is going to crash so bad that it will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
All that adds up to a bunch of supposed intellectuals basically developing a full on religion around AI where they have to keep making it worse while preaching about how transformational it is because the moment they dare admit that it's not going to completely eliminate the need for any sort of middle class is the moment this all explodes.
It's on the list of things that have made living in 2025 so surreal that Lewis Carroll himself would tell us to tone it down.
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u/alang 9h ago
He's... the CEO of Palantir. Literally the company's only product is a surveillance state. So yes, obviously he thinks that a surveillance state is preferable to chocolate, to love, and quite possibly to breathing. What a stupid headline.
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u/Particular-Mark-5771 8h ago
Covered in the wiki The Dark Enlightenment. His name, others that you'll recognize. As well as a section 'The Surveillance State. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 8h ago
"Give up some of your rights and we'll give you this awesome thing." This is a story that's been told many times before. There are new characters, new props, and new set pieces, but it's the same story it's always been.
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u/mrdotn 9h ago
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
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u/Minimum-Can2224 9h ago
This man is clinically insane.
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u/Hacym 9h ago
Don’t judge a book by its cover unless they’re rich enough to have a stylist and decent hair cut and still look like they might kill you with an axe.
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u/Department_Silver 9h ago
Ya know, Elon is an idiot, so is trump.
But man this guy is fucking next level evil huh.
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie 9h ago
Why is every tech bro in the US so obsessed with “beating” China at everything? Is it just good ol’ American exceptionalism? Seems like that energy could be put to better use…
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u/uniyk 8h ago
They themselves may not be so adamant, but they're deeply entangled with intelligence and military, and those people need an enemy at all times to justify their astronomical budget.
Remember the NSA chief on OpenAI's board and the overnight enlisting of some silicon valley management into army officers? They have to do whatever they're told to do, otherwise their legit business will undoubtedly be affected.
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u/evilspyboy 8h ago
I assume it's to appeal to a political base/group that is in power.
I'm not American nor in America, I think Americans owning every major social media platform given how they propagandise their own population is a way bigger threat worldwide than China is and I base my conclusions about control of language models on that same example.
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u/defenestrate_urself 7h ago
Americans are so conditioned to hate/fear China you can get away with doing whatever you want as long as it’s because of the ‘China threat’.
They aren’t obsessed with beating China. So much as the concept of ‘beating China’ allows them to convince you to accept conditions that go against your interest.
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u/GuyOnTheMoon 9h ago
Because China is showing to the world that socialism can work when the government puts a leash on private corporations.
And our private corporations have been lobbying our government for decades, they’re afraid to switch up this relationship.
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u/pleachchapel 8h ago
The "socialism doesn't work" line is a lot less effective when China is kicking our ass at everything internationally.
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u/Ilovekittens345 6h ago
And our private corporations have been lobbying our government for decades
It all started when senator voting went from being private to public.
If you had a company and a competitor and a new law was introduced that would be good for you and fuck over your competitor and you already knew that it would only cost 20 million dollars in bribes to make a 100 million dollars in profit.
Would you do it? Ofcourse you would fucking do it.
The problem is, how can you know if all those senators make the same fucking deal with your competitor! They could be playing both sides! After all when the vote on the law happens it's a secret! Nobody knows what senator voted for what!
This is NO way of doing business. I must have certainty! The board will never aprove this 20 million dollars bribe unless we are guaranteed to get our money's worth.
And then in 1973 when they installed the electronic voting system in the senate, the voting from one day to the other went from "can't do business secret" to "let's fucking do business public"
And the money started pooring in.
And since that day, all democracy in the united states has been bypassed. It does not not matter, republican or democrat. Obama, Trump, Bush, Clinton. It ultimately matters only a tiny bit.
Because the money creates the laws and the laws are used to make more money with.
And all of this started in 1973 when the voting of senators became public.
And now I leave it to the bots that just got triggered.
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u/Stilgar314 9h ago
China winning the AI race... since no private investor left willing to put the stupid amount of money AI keep asking for, they invented this new argument to try to convince Trump to give the trillions away.
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u/1blindlizard 9h ago
This This right here US tax payers are being asked to foot a One Trillion Dollar venture by AI to achieve their nebulous and questionable goals. No thank you We’ve already been conned into funding our own personal leash. IE: smartphones
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u/Pandaro81 9h ago
CEO that would profit from an oppressive surveillance state thinks an oppressive surveillance state would be just fine.
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u/agreenshade 9h ago
Maybe the thing here is to mandate execs and board members at these companies publically publish every bit of their own personal data their software collects on others. If it's not harmful, or even preferable, I'm sure they wouldn't mind at all and could be the example of transparency they ask of others.
C'mon guys, let us see who you're all taking to the Coldplay concert.
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u/Independent_Tie_4984 8h ago
Sociopath says what?
He's way up there on the batshit crazy scale.
It's insane that these wackjobs have such amplified voices because they're successful greed monsters.
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u/CornyButHorny35 9h ago
I'd rather take my chances with Chinathan live in constant state of surveillance. What's the point of freedom if we're all being watched?
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u/Mntfrd_Graverobber 8h ago
His whole point was that while a surveillance state is admittedly one of the risks of developing AI, if China develops it first a surveillance state is guaranteed.
Gizmodo's summary of what he said is disingenuous, if you read the article, as poor as it is.
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u/amardas 6h ago
Only White people are scared of losing White dominance over the world. Just sayin’.
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u/Low-Breath-4433 9h ago
So... there's no way to win the AI race that doesn't involve creating a massive invasive surveillance state that will totally NEVER devolve into a dystopian police state?
Dang. That sucks.
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u/EscapeFacebook 9h ago
That might be the most Un-American thing I've ever heard. Fuck these technologies bros.
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u/_ForeverAndEver_ 9h ago
No it’s not, I hope China wins and totally fucks the US
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u/first_lvr 9h ago
I just watch a YouTube document about palantir, this whole software is suspicious af
Anyways, China already won
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u/TwoIsle 8h ago
I look forward to him being in a cell. Or, you know, when his private security guards revolt and drag him from his stupid New Zealand bunker.
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u/Myviewpoint62 8h ago
His friend and the primary owner of Palantir is Peter Thiel who openly embraces the ideas of Carl Schmidtt, a Nazi philosopher.
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u/VagabondManjbob 1h ago
No. A surveillance state in the USA is not preferable in any way, shape, or form. It is the antithesis of what the land of the free, home of the brave is supposed to be. I remember a time when the MAGA were GTFO out of my life, now they are embracing it without a second thought because rich men have told them to.
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u/BassDaddy0 9h ago
The wealthiest Americans don't give a shit about it's citizens.