I'd prefer to think there are more possibilities than that.
> “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.”
Lose your rights to Vance/Thiel or to China. Thank you tech community for giving us that.
Between those, which has significantly improved people’s lives more?
China delivers affordable versions of everything only rich people would have if rich people had their way.
The true test will be if their locally run LLMs, while heavily sandboxed and whitelist-only network restricted, are useful to the average man. Might be worth some real respect
It certainly isn't Peter Thiel, Alex Karp or JD Vance. Nor is it the vast majority of "big tech" who have all undeniably made the world significantly worse for a few extra advertising dollars.
But, hey, I'm sure all the Meta engineers think they're doing transformative, important things and not just like, figuring out clever ways to give teenage girls depression faster.
> I'm sure all the Meta engineers think they're doing transformative, important things
I wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt at this point in time. A decade ago I would, but not now.
Neither?
Disproportional surveillance is harmful, exploitive surveillance. The entire point of Palantir is to maximize that condition - a tool for powerful entities to snoop on us while they increasingly obscure their own behaviors.
We became a surveillance state in 2001, so in effect, Bin Laden won. [0] And don't forget, people sacrificed their lives so that the White House would not be partially demolished.
> FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to reveal the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government’s massive and controversial secret surveillance program–and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public. Part one goes inside Washington to piece together the secret political history of “The Program,” which began in the wake of Sept. 11 and continues today
[0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/united-states...
"Bin Laden won" is a phrase you don't see too often; I tend to agree insofar as OBL managed to get the American nation to subvert itself.
The realisation they won is extremely important if the US is to ever recover from the last decades of civil rights and international credibility erosion. I don’t think it’ll happen though, and we’ll live to see the sunset of this empire.
Sauron Says Palantir Surveillance Preferable to Haradrim Winning the Horse Breeding Race
Wasnt he a philosophy major and lawyer? So he should know bad arguments like hasty generalization or false choice. I would argue that creating a survaliance state would increase china's likelihood of "winning", why would people choose the US or western values if they are essentially the same?
He knows. He also knows a lot of people will fall for it.
Surveillance state has already happened. His words aren't meant for the interviewer but for US senators and others in control of purse strings. Buy this or someone else will.
I am surprised to see Palantir's CEO to say such a thing!
Of course. They're in the surveillance data analisys business and deeply care if China wins.
America becoming a surveillance state means China has won. If not in terms of global power, then certainly in terms of their ideology vs ours.
After reading this I don't understand the connection between surveillance and China. OpenAI/Anthropic/Google are developing AI without using it for surveillance. Whether they win the AI race or China does has nothing to do with Palantir.
You are right - the argument is designed to create a moral panic that allows further power grabs.
This is a false dichotomy, from someone who profits from such manufactured fear.
Surveillance is the movie, radio, TV watching you. Not so prefereable.
He wants a lot more than that.
Nope.
Absolutely no.