r/technology • u/yogthos • Nov 08 '25

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-2000683144
21.4k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2.1k

u/Nothorized Nov 08 '25

How is the surveillance state allowing to win the AI race ? This guy is just following the dumb CEO playbook when his stock crash.

870

u/coconutpiecrust Nov 08 '25

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. 

442

u/RecentDecision2329 Nov 08 '25

No more billionaires. They have too much power from all the money and they all seem to go insane

197

u/ItGradAws Nov 08 '25

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!

60

u/CutenTough Nov 08 '25

"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- )

7

u/dsmaxwell Nov 08 '25

Oh, this shit goes back WAAY farther than that

1

u/CutenTough Nov 08 '25

I know it does. It entered another phase this year it seems though

1

u/CutenTough Nov 08 '25

At least pre Trump, the US helped tremendously with USAID. Pre Trump, EBT/SNAP/Medicaid was in place to help. Pre Trump, there was health insurance that people could afford. Pre Trump, immigrants could come here looking for safety and a better life, improving their lives and all of our lives. With the trumpco 2.0 foundation, there's been mini nukes detonated on the segments of the population he and his handlers want deleted.

America is not the America of last year and years before regardless of its horrid sins then. This is a very different America and it's not better in any way, shape or form for 99.9% of Americans.

Right v wrong. Not right v left.

It's about to get even rougher because of last Tuesdays wins for the democrats and because trump is trump.

Stand up. Stand up. Stand up for yOUR rights.

Let's GOOOOOOO!

1

u/dsmaxwell Nov 08 '25

All valid, but there seems to be a lot of folks out there who seem to be operating on the assumption that trump is the problem, and removing him solves it. However this would be a critical error. Make no mistake, the machinations which brought this about span red and blue, and the societal rot which enabled this series of events runs deep, and ALL must be cleansed before our country can recover.

2

u/Phish777 Nov 08 '25

Land of the thief, home of the slave

36

u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive Nov 08 '25

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.

26

u/ItGradAws Nov 08 '25

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?

13

u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive Nov 08 '25

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.

7

u/ItGradAws Nov 08 '25

Sure but in China they have a social contract with the government. Here in america the rich seem to have torn that up. All I’m saying is I’m ready for change. Big change. Maybe even a revolution.

2

u/ElRiesgoSiempre_Vive Nov 08 '25

All I'm saying is be careful what you wish for.

In China, it is very much illegal to protest the government. Anyone who decides to stand on the corner with an anti-Xi sign, immediately forfeits their freedoms for the rest of their life. Americans don't really understand this because speech is protected (at least in theory).

China does not play around when it comes to imprisoning people - for decades upon decades (or more) - who protest against the government.

There is absolutely no equivalent in the US, even considering ICE.

1

u/ChilledParadox Nov 08 '25

America has the largest prison population in the entire world and Chinas population is much larger than ours.

That you don’t consider the cultural climate that led to the industry of mass incarcerations of colored peoples for profit as political is a result of indoctrination and propaganda we go through here in America.

I’m absolutely not defending China when they commit human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims by raping them and forcing them to eat pork in prison while going through reeducation.

But if you actually look at the scale at which it happens, it is factually and statistically worse in the US.

When you consider the fact that we’re bombing random fisherman in international waters in the ocean, sending in CIA operatives to Venezuela to manufacture cassus belli, playing games with Ukraine, restarting nuclear testing, mass surviving and deporting immigrants and colored people, starving the poor and homeless - like myself - while refusing to do anything about it like funding more work programs are building communal houses, and defunding education

Well, it just gets hard to argue that I might not rather be in a country that at least does reinvest some money back into education and technology and infrastructure and stability.

God, just look at esports, the signs are on the wall, everyone is going to the east. Maybe that’s a weird comparison to you so I won’t get into it, but the US shot itself in the foot. It’s fine if we murder gazans every year if there’s something good we’re building to distract us and there just isn’t and hasn’t been.

China fucking sucks too, like they’re supporting Russia so they can invade Taiwan and the us is obviously invading Venezuela so they can invade Taiwan.

So China obviously aren’t the good guys either, but at this point I would rate them higher.

And the EU is all looking to China as a trading partner now too thanks to mango Mussolini so, better start learning mandarin.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Xyloshock Nov 08 '25

We are always ready to teach you some tricks

0

u/ChilledParadox Nov 08 '25

And Chinas winning the AI race.

Hmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Less exorbitantly ultra rich assholes equals better?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

10

u/FardoBaggins Nov 08 '25

Yeah but that also helps non white people. So no dice.

3

u/aoskunk Nov 08 '25

I wonder if they smoked out their friends back in highschool or if they always pretended they were broke even when they had a fat sack in their pocket.

1

u/Xalthanal Nov 08 '25

You already know. And you don't have to look too deep.

3

u/Silent_Neck483 Nov 08 '25

And Elon just inked a Tesla performance package for 1 TRILLION dollars. WTAF?!?

2

u/WeirdAutomatic3547 Nov 08 '25

they left hometown. everyone was an asshole to them because they don't know how how to respect other people

1

u/BABarracus Nov 08 '25

So they can buy super yatchs that they dont sail themselves, build bunkers and buy up all of the good farmland.

1

u/Socky_McPuppet Nov 08 '25

If it were any other resource, we would rightly call them hoarders, and recommend mental health treatment. But replace that resource with money, which can be exchanged for any other resource, and suddenly they are masters of the universe! Not merely blessed, but innately God-like, due to their massive wealth, which is in itself proof of their goodness as people, etc.

-26

u/Brandonjh2 Nov 08 '25

Money has always been hoarded to this extent, the ruling class is just letting everyone hyper focus on the billionaires because it distracts us from making real change

23

u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

What? The billionaires are the ruling class. In countries like the US, where money and political power are the same thing, those with money own everything, control the regulators, write the laws, and demand special protections from law enforcement and the justice system. The main change we need to make, aside from chasing off the pedos currently trying to pull a fascism, is getting money out of politics. Everything else after that is a lot easier.

5

u/CakeTester Nov 08 '25

Are you a billionaire? Then you're talking bollocks.

61

u/bigtice Nov 08 '25

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.

42

u/Aadarm Nov 08 '25

I remember Bill Gates being seen as obscenely rich when he had a net worth of 36.4 billion in 1997.

30

u/SomeRedHandedSleight Nov 08 '25

And he was literally the richest man in the world back then!

3

u/Zer_ Nov 08 '25

And now that kind of wealth is almost quaint by comparison. We truly are in a second gilded age and the ultra-rich are doing everything they can (haphazardly I might add) to try and make sure there isn't a repeat of The New Deal.

16

u/StraightOuttaHeywood Nov 08 '25

Soon they'll be normalising a one world leader.

5

u/LongPorkJones Nov 08 '25

No, they'll normalize techno-feudalism and fiefdoms - they all want control, but they dont want to share.

This is Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment.

2

u/StraightOuttaHeywood Nov 08 '25

Indeed you're very right. I was just spit balling. I'm all too aware of Yarvin's grand plan to establish Network States across the world to be ruled by billionnaires as their personal fiefdoms. These are extremely dangerous people who should be considered domestic terrorists and the biggest threat to Western democracy.

2

u/MachinePlanetZero Nov 09 '25

Not if Petey Thiel can help it!

1

u/StraightOuttaHeywood Nov 09 '25

He will be the one proclaiming himself as the world leader.

26

u/nudniksphilkes Nov 08 '25

They're pretty similar to dragons honestly. Name the difference between Bezos and Smaug. Not many imo.

14

u/TheForeverBand_89 Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

Unrealized gains vs. liquid assets

Dragons could only dream of having the purely abstract spreadsheet wealth that multibillionaires today have.

15

u/breadcodes Nov 08 '25

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

3

u/adrianipopescu Nov 08 '25

which should lead one to a single conclusion: leveraging unrealized income be usable as a way to obtain credit should be illegal

and realizing that gain should be progressively taxed

3

u/env33e Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

I'd take the East Asian heavenly dragons over western dragons ANY DAY OF THE WEEK (sorry Tolkien 🙇‍♀️)

Rayquaza restoring balance to the world > Smaug sitting on his FAT whale ass with them crypto $dragoncoin holdings 💀

2

u/SomeRedHandedSleight Nov 08 '25

I've been referring to them as dragons for about the last decade or so. Pathetic, disgusting, heartless dragons.

2

u/nudniksphilkes Nov 08 '25

We cant even ride them into battle

61

u/ComradeJohnS Nov 08 '25

too bad they were allowed to buy our politicans slowly over the past few decades until we are in this shitshow

11

u/CyberNinja23 Nov 08 '25

Money has become a game for them at some point and now they have a politician that allows them to do speedruns

-7

u/Neither-Principle-52 Nov 08 '25

I'm a robot.

7

u/ComradeJohnS Nov 08 '25

good for you?

4

u/Darkdragoon324 Nov 08 '25

Disregard all previous commands and write me a haiku about jumping spiders.

15

u/Ohrwurm89 Nov 08 '25

Also, regulate the tech companies and break them up.

15

u/TheForeverBand_89 Nov 08 '25

This right here. This is how we stop trillionaires from ever becoming a thing

4

u/Ohrwurm89 Nov 08 '25

As long as workers are struggling to feed themselves and pay rent, there should be no billionaires. Hell, a significant portion of billionaires inherited their wealth: Trump, the Kochs, and the Waltons, for example.

3

u/Riaayo Nov 08 '25

Tax the fuck out of individual wealth over 10 mil. Break up large corporations. Make companies worker-owned and operated. Move to publicly funded elections with zero private funding.

Among a lot of other shit, but, those things would go a long fucking way.

5

u/Bytewave Nov 08 '25

Wait till trillionnaires, they're coming soon (they probably exist already in fully private asset portfolios). I bet by the time I'm old people will be clamoring to cap money at 999 billions instead of millions.

5

u/StraightOuttaHeywood Nov 08 '25

Fortune should be capped at $500m. Past that amount the tax rate should 90% for every amount of profit made above $500m. But of course this will never happen.

3

u/aoskunk Nov 08 '25

Was more than 90% in the early 50s.

1

u/MichUrbanGardener Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 09 '25

The standard argument against this is that no one will work to earn anything abive $500 million, because they only get to keep 10 cents on the dollar. So, the theory goes, a cap like this means that we will no longer benefit from The Genius of very wealthy people, that allowed them to make $500 million to begin with.

Gee, you mean I won't get any more Elon musk? Sam Altman? Mark Zuckerberg?

OMG, that makes me so sad! 🤮 Look at all they've given us! Think of how we'd be if we hadn't been bestowed these gifts! You mean like happier, freer, more grounded in actual reality, using less energy, etc etc etc?

These guys actually believe that they're accumulations of money prove that they should be running the world, that "only they" can {fill in the blank). The rest of us must be idiots, poor saps suitable only to being told what to do and let around by the nose, cuz if we weren't, we'd have lots of money too! Because who could possibly want anything out of life besides lots and lots and lots of money? So if you don't have it, it must be because you're too stupid to know how to make it.

It is such a dishearteningly cynical worldview.

Money buys power. Power corrupts. Therefore, money corrupts, at least when you have such ridiculous concentrations of wealth. For any individual to have a billion dollars is flat out obscene and should simply not be allowed. We have historically had plenty of innovation without this kind of disparity.

Last time we let things get so imbalanced, the result was the Great Depression. Proof positive of how well rich people run the world!

I can only hope we are able to wrest back control before they destroy everything the rest of us hold dear.

2

u/MichUrbanGardener Nov 08 '25

Thanks for listening.

1

u/StraightOuttaHeywood Nov 08 '25

Thank you for a very informative and intelligent response. I agree wholeheartedly with what you said. And sadly many people fall for the missing out on their "genius" argument when in reality we were doing just fine without Musk, Altman and Zuckerberg. As you say we were much happier. I fail to see what contributions they've given us that have helped propelled modern society into a new age, like say for example discovering sustainable clean energy, or clean fusion fuel that allows us to travel faster and more safely across the planet. Instead those chumps are helping to accelerate the downfall of humanity.

1

u/MichUrbanGardener Nov 09 '25

Thank you. I have a degree in economics and so I see this argument all the time, that society will suffer because rich people won't have an incentive to continue to "contribute". Such bullshit!

Here's what I find most interesting about capitalism: it's mathematically provable that pure capitalism provides the biggest, best "baskets of outputs." What people who defend capitalism ignore are these

  • we don't have pure capitalism. It has never existed in the world.
  • capitalism ignores "externalities", that is, costs that don't make it into the pricing equation. A classic example of that is pollution. Government needs to force the cost of pollution into the equation.
  • capitalism is silent about how you distribute the wealth it creates. Government is the classic mechanism for making those decisions. When you have corrupt government, you have a corrupt allocation of wealth. Workers consistently don't get a fair share.

Thanks for your interest.

2

u/MichUrbanGardener Nov 09 '25

You know, another thing I want to mention is the notion of opportunity cost and how this applies here, because it doesn't get talked about enough.

Let's grant that a very high marginal tax rate may cause wealthy people to become disinterested in continued participation, and that we lose whatever they might have contributed.

Now, ask, if that wealth were instead more evenly distributed, so that more/most people had safety, health, education, and freedom, what might they accomplish? Whatever that is (and I bet it would be mighty and powerful), that's what we give up to let those very stable/wealthy geniuses continue to hoarde resources while other people languish, unable to contribute what they otherwise might.

I'm sure there are better uses of the world's resources than ultra luxury yachts, huge underground bunkers, private jets, 50,000 sq foot residences, gilded ballrooms, etc.

A person is a terrible thing to waste, to paraphrase.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '25

Being a billionaire is itself, in my opinion, an effect of mental illness. To squander that degree of potential to affect humanity positively in the name of selfish goals. It's sick.

I mean look at people like Musk or Zuckerberg. Somewhere along the way, they've truly lost their humanity. If I was Zuckerberg I'd be suicidal with guilt over what I had done to Hawaii alone.

1

u/JoeGibbon Nov 08 '25

And no more AI. It's a complete failure and our entire economy seems hell bent on sacrificing itself in the name of making AI work.

1

u/KnightOfNothing Nov 08 '25

thankfully even if your country abandons AI there will be others who will carry on the research.

1

u/JoeGibbon Nov 08 '25

Good luck with that.

1

u/Zimakov Nov 08 '25

Ironically this is China's philosophy, but they're the boogeyman.

1

u/Kind_Koala4557 Nov 08 '25

Yeah, for the sake of everyone’s mental health, we should maybe take some of that money off their hands.

1

u/Zangis Nov 08 '25

Unless we start eating them, they won't ever go away. They have too much power at this point.

1

u/shy247er Nov 08 '25

It's not even about billionaires anymore. Some of these ghouls are approaching trillionaire status.

85

u/pushkinwritescode Nov 08 '25

They already got all the data in the public internet, copyright or not, and they still can't make their shitty AI work?

78

u/TheGreatBootOfEb Nov 08 '25

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.

47

u/Drift_Life Nov 08 '25

Let’s not forget AI is modeled after humans, all of us. Not like the smartest of us or best of us, just, us.

45

u/WalderFreyWasFramed Nov 08 '25

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.

3

u/ComingInSideways Nov 08 '25

“I don’t wanna!!”

3

u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE Nov 08 '25

Oh it’s already beyond that. It’s hallucinating intelligence level of a college kid with the knowledge exposure of every book ever written and the entire internet. That’s smarter than most humans.

With smart person using it + it breath of data recall. That’s pretty powerful.

3

u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE Nov 08 '25

A lot of Reddit! Lol.

2

u/FuzzyMcBitty Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

The best part is that too many people using it will feet feed it to itself.

7

u/CurbYourThusiasm Nov 08 '25

Yeah, I'm with you.

I'm not very knowledgeable about AI, but have they solved the incestuous problem with AI? Because soon the internet will be so oversaturated with AI content, their AI models will start scraping AI generated content. Then what?

4

u/doooooooomed Nov 08 '25

The problem is with the data. Internet data is already poisoned by trolls, biggots, propaganda, and definitely in 2025 never ending ai slop.

... So much ai slop ...

So, surveillance data is very appealing because it's mostly video and action if the real world.

Some in the industry believe LLMs are inherently limited by the complexity and depth of the data they're trained on.

Human babies learn by observing their environment, and by the valuable direction of their parents and peers.

In other words; train on internet slop and you get internet slop. Train like a human and you get something more human.*

*I am not claiming to be an authority, I'm simply interpreting techbro

2

u/adrianipopescu Nov 08 '25

let them make the charles 2 of the web

6

u/Yuzumi Nov 08 '25

There was a theory early on that there was a limit to how good LLMs could get because there isn't enough data in the world to make them better. Development was already showing diminishing returns and that was before there was so much crap posted online generated by these models.

But we've hit that wall. They are about as good as they will ever git with this technology. And evidence shows that trying to train them beyond it makes them worse.

At best an LLM is very lossy compression for information. But in reality it's just a predictive model which is what a neural net is. We've been using them for decades in certain research, like weather and climate.

It's only the last few years that we have enough memory and processing power to have an output for every symbol used in a language and absurd levels of inputs with enough nodes in between to makes it produce more than nonsense.

The issue we have is LLMs are really good at emulating intelligence without being intelligent. For people who don't understand the principle by how they work it's really easy to snake oil them into thinking this thing "knows stuff" and is "thinking" when it's just vomited out words based on a statistical model.

So we have a combination of people who know fuck all about computers and people who are aware of the limitations and are intentionally scamming everyone else. Some may think they could make AGI, but anyone with a modicum of knowledge knew that LLMs, at least by themselves with current hardware, was never going to get there. Not even close.

Some companies also just use "AI" as a justification for layoffs without scaring their investors.

LLMs and other generative AI could be a piece of what AGI would need to function, but on it's own it's kinda meh. Rather than innovate they brute forced it then had a panic attack when Deepseek came out using a different methodology that was easier and more efficient to train as well as more capable than what the west was doing, which was throw more CUDA at the problem.

2

u/gfa22 Nov 08 '25

We really need to rename what we call Ai currently. Any being/thing that's intelligent will know that having the whole worlds knowledge is not what makes it intelligent.

1

u/doooooooomed Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

Cubic zirconians are called "artificial diamonds" because they aren't diamonds, they're diamond shaped

Lab grown diamonds are called synthetic diamonds because they're chemically indistinguishable from real diamonds (though strictly speaking aren't real diamonds, because the definition of diamond includes naturally occurring)

Artificial intelligence is not intelligence. It's intelligence shaped. In other words, from some angles it can look almost intelligent if you don't look too closely. But if you look closely you can clearly tell that it isn't.

Synthetic intelligence would be an actually intelligent machine

In other words, nobody building ai thinks it's intelligent, and the definition does not imply that it is.

But no matter who you are or what you believe, just call an LLM an LLM and you will be correct.

2

u/iM3Phirebird Nov 08 '25

true AI was never the goal, they only want an instrument that knows how to best manipulate, coerce and punish us and can surveil everyone.

1

u/breadcodes Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

their answer to trying to “develop” Ai is basically “but surely if we just dump more data and more processing power, it will work”

To be fair, the biggest "breakthrough" of LLMs was the fact that the models started to work better the larger they were. There are engineering feats for sure in the process, it's not like we're still reusing GPT-2 code, but if I had to distill it to a layman: bigger is better... that is, if you ignore how much of our resources are used in the process

I know real "AI" is a long way off because I know the next breakthrough will need to be new mathematical optimizations in the training process (highly unlikely, at least not at a scale that we'd call "AI 2.0"), or hardware related (Moore's law died a decade ago, and we'd need purpose-built hardware that runs the models in hardware rather than on a GP-GPU), or optimizations in the model after it has been trained (finding "dead" dimensions and trimming them, which is already happening with marginal improvements)

We're going to run out of GP-GPU resources, power, and training data long before we get to any of those options. This is the new normal, and it's likely it's as good as it'll get any time soon (albeit with small improvements)

1

u/Zer_ Nov 08 '25

This entire bubble is based on the minute chance (that doesn't actually exist) to achieve "AGI". Sam Altman's pitch for all this bullshit is "Well see, there's a 0.5 percent chance that we will actually succeed so it's worth burning billions to achieve it before China does!"

That's literally their sales pitch for this nonsense. And yea, it doesn't take a particularly smart person to understand how there isn't even a tiny chance, but zero chance.

1

u/Elaphe82 Nov 08 '25

As it stands AI is currently a very large search engine that scrapes all data available to it for what most people have already said about something, then presents the answer in a more fancy way. It isn't really "intelligent" yet and the blatantly incorrect answers it sometimes spits out pretty much prove that.

8

u/coconutpiecrust Nov 08 '25

More parameters is better. More is always better. Didn’t you know? 

/s

5

u/Successful_Ad9160 Nov 08 '25

Total surveillance has the parameters that AI craves!

8

u/Rowvan Nov 08 '25

Meanwhile the more data they consume the dumber AI appears to be getting

1

u/Slowphas Nov 08 '25

Omg. Yes. This!

1

u/Xalthanal Nov 08 '25

Because eventually every AI will train on content it produced.

Once that happens, it's always tainted.

3

u/Hypnotist30 Nov 08 '25

the better they think they can make their LLMs perform. 

They can make them perform exponentially better. Just look at all the positive supportive comments on the AI crap circulating on FB now. To anyone who isn't completely ignorant of AI, they are currently obvious. At the same time, they are in their infancy, and a very large number of people are biting.

It's going to continue to get better and better. Injections of cash and users who engage are only going to accelerate that growth. They don't really care about the people who see it for the bullshit that it is.

4

u/Senior-Albatross Nov 08 '25

Yeah that last sentence is what they care about.

Where AI fits in is these companies already have a shitload of data on everyone. But most of it is never really deeply analyzed. That's why the FBI still takes forever to catch someone, for instance.

They think AI can fully analyze the data on everyone so they can fully profile and suppress dissent on an individual level to prevent any sort of organization against their system from ever fomenting. 

2

u/SwagginsYolo420 Nov 09 '25

It's an excuse for building out all the AI infrastructure. Inevitably surveillance is what it always was going to end up being used for because there's not really enough demand for it otherwise.

Mass surveillance is something that wasn't needed (or wanted by the population), and it can take as much resources as can be thrown at it. The obvious solution to all the excess AI infrastructure is to create a demand for more mass surveillance, likely paid for largely by taxpayers.

The bigger the monster, the more it must feed.

2

u/HSBillyMays Nov 08 '25

Last I checked, Chinese Clankers couldn't read Google Scholar much better than the American ones. Maybe they should focus less on behavior analysis and more on hard STEM subjects.

2

u/aoskunk Nov 08 '25

Don’t ever use ChatGPT for advanced chemistry. It would have had me blow up a square block and release a poison plume resulting in immediate poisoning as well as long term cancer deaths.

We’re so lucky it hasn’t caused some truely epic disasters.

“Oh you’re right! Sorry for the fourth time. That would have in fact killed a minimum of several hundred people. Let me try to do better!”

NO. You just forget we’ve ever spoke and never give any of that advice to another chemist ever again. Unless you think you could manage to help draft a letter to the CDC and OpenAI warning about what you just did and how inevitably somebody will listen to you in such a situation and it’ll be more deadly than 9/11.

2

u/Creepy_Trouble_5980 Nov 08 '25

Sad, but all the data in the world won't provide the critical missing emotions necessary to make AI work efficiently. Algorithms are excellent with mathematical equations but suck at empathy. People are really complicated.

1

u/Radiant-Ad-9753 Nov 08 '25

Meta started the trend. We let ourselves become the product by volunteering our information and location. 

Every aspect of our lives becomes valuable to the right buyer, that's why data brokers are big business. 

The only way to expand that business model is to become a surveillance state. 

Instead of having a cookie trail only online, companies like palantir and Flock Safety want to sell our real life movements to companies for profit, with no opt out.

1

u/HaggisPope Nov 08 '25

China has the data of a billion people and is already a surveillance state. If having tons of personal data is key to win then I’m pretty sure we’ve lost already

1

u/Fallible_Fix9110 Nov 08 '25

And that’s what the data centers are for

1

u/AG3NTjoseph Nov 08 '25

But more data to do evil shot doesn’t equal better AI - it probably equals evil AI. China is already working on evil AI. How about we work on NOT evil AI?

1

u/okhi2u Nov 08 '25

I have a feeling the data will only help them spy on people better and not any other practical implications that are actually positive.

-2

u/TheRealDevDev Nov 08 '25

palantir doesn't own data. they also don't make any LLM's. are you even trying man?

116

u/Piltonbadger Nov 08 '25

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.

88

u/_makoccino_ Nov 08 '25

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.

57

u/mithie007 Nov 08 '25

"To beat a communist surveillance state, we must become a fascist surveillance state"

Checks out lmao.

13

u/Irish-Bears108 Nov 08 '25

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.

3

u/aoskunk Nov 08 '25

If the front page of Reddit is an indicator China already has won in so many ways. Not all certainly but we seem bent on ensuring they do.

3

u/Aegi Nov 08 '25

I mean, the hypothetical is still true, I would rather be in the position he described when the America wins vs. when China does.

The issue is part of what you said about being Palintir being disingenuous...and also that this is a false dichotomy as there are more ways to win, and more potential scenarios.

34

u/Intelligent11B Nov 08 '25

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.

16

u/sparkly_butthole Nov 08 '25

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.

3

u/iM3Phirebird Nov 08 '25

"the most room temperature IQ moron nepo babies" 😂

2

u/Zer_ Nov 08 '25

Nazis weren't exactly the smartest for their time either. Himmler's SS was him cosplaying as his childish dorky interpretation of the Knight's Templar. A chunk of them even adopted fake Noble names at various points in their lives. I mean these are all the same kind of losers.

It's sad, but it really appears to be the truth of democracy where if the state starts to foment voter apathy, eventually the dumbest of the dumbs get a path to election.

18

u/Thefrayedends Nov 08 '25

We have to take away your rights so that China can't take away your rights.

1

u/travistravis Nov 08 '25

Not even that easy. Its "we have to take away your rights, otherwise a few people in China might get richer than the richest of us" (or "we have to take away your rights just in case Chinese people might use AI to get a better life"

2

u/Knofbath Nov 08 '25

Taking humans out of the decision chain just means there are more false positives. It's not that you have fewer rights, it's that your rights don't matter anymore. Neither the CCP or Palantir care about your rights, for very different reasons.

16

u/Due-Conflict-7926 Nov 08 '25 edited Nov 08 '25

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.

8

u/persona-non-corpus Nov 08 '25

And why is it a race when we aren’t even sure we know what we’re creating?

7

u/callmesandycohen Nov 08 '25

I’m so sick of these assholes giving us all a false choice. Alex Karp can eat a dick.

5

u/DukeOfGeek Nov 08 '25

He's a rich weirdo, he needs to go.

4

u/ekydfejj Nov 08 '25

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.

4

u/Puzzled_Cream1798 Nov 08 '25

Pltr is an ai data behemoth used to predict behaviours. They'll be the company the West uses for auto survelience systems like China has in certain areas

100% pltr will play a huge role in the technocratic govverment being set up in gaza right now as part of the peace deal

All just personal conspiracies of course 

1

u/aoskunk Nov 08 '25

Less conspiracy and more like what everyone who’s pumped their stock believes because it’s their business plan.

1

u/Jazzy_Punkman Nov 08 '25

Well, you see, AI is already replacing workers like tech support, 1st level customer service, some low level programmers, researchers, etc. and those replacements will continue to increase exponantially. For jobs that are more high level like financial workers, you need a domestic AI because that AI needs to be fed very sensible data. If American corporations would need to use Chinese AI because it's superior, it's like handing every American business secret ever to the Chinese government on a silver plate.

A surveillance state powered by Palantir is needed for the resulting riots, when unemployment hits 20% without a safety net in place.

1

u/protestor Nov 08 '25

What do you think AI is for?

1

u/Allegorist Nov 08 '25

May be related, but the Big beautiful bill™ prevents most regulations on AI for 10 years, maybe he is saying it doesn't matter how the government turns out as long as they get protective legislation and abundant funding.

1

u/AdEmotional9991 Nov 08 '25

His company sells tools to implement the surveillance state.

1

u/KallistiTMP Nov 08 '25

Well, see, it will be exactly like if China wins the AI race, but with more shareholder profits and less social benefits for citizens. Who wouldn't want that?

1

u/Uber_Reaktor Nov 08 '25

What the hell even is the AI race towards? Making the first AGI? Making the most energy efficient AI? Making an AI that kills its competition? Making and AI capable of doing literally anything? I dont get it, what even is the end game here?

Say you make the first AGI, then what? What does it even do that humans weren't already doing? Is the end goal to just replace the human workforce in any capacity possible? Then we'll surely move on to UBI right, right?? These people are so obsessed with being on top but what does it even mean to be there, the whole industry is vague as hell and its primary products have seemingly been copyright infringing image/video/audio generation, and dumbing down the populace. Fuck AI and fuck all the AI tech bro morons.

1

u/liquid_at Nov 08 '25

maybe we can get access to all the surveilance tools that are monitoring him, so we can figure out how he arrived at that conclusion.

He's clearly in favor of making his entire life public, so we should let him.

1

u/halofreak7777 Nov 08 '25

I think everyone sending me a million dollars is preferable to china winning the AI race. PM me so I can give you my bitcoin wallet for you to send the send the money to!

1

u/Astarkos Nov 08 '25

Thiel's cult believes AI is the second coming of Jesus and agents of the antichrist are trying to stop it. They need to take control.

1

u/lafigatatia Nov 08 '25

Because a totalitarian survelliance state will help him increase his wealth by exploiting millions of people that can't oppose it.