AI is not a toy. It is a weapon

In 2012, Palantir quietly embedded itself into the daily operations of the New Orleans Police Department. There were no public announcements. No contracts made available to the city council. Instead, the surveillance company partnered with a local nonprofit to sidestep oversight, gaining access to years of arrest records, licenses, addresses, and phone numbers all to build a shadowy predictive policing program.

Palantir’s software mapped webs of human relationships, assigned residents algorithmic “risk scores,” and helped police generate “target lists” all without public knowledge. “We very much like to not be publicly known,” a Palantir engineer wrote in an internal email later obtained by The Verge.

After years spent quietly powering surveillance systems for police departments and federal agencies, the company has rebranded itself as a frontier AI firm, selling machine learning platforms designed for military dominance and geopolitical control.

"AI is not a toy. It is a weapon,” said CEO Alex Karp. “It will be used to kill people.”

  • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
    302·
    11 days ago

    I wonder what George Orwell would have to say about all this… nvm, he already said everything there is to say.

    • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldEnglish
      964·
      11 days ago

      He would love it since he was a right-wing POS, snitch and thief among other things.

      • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.worldEnglish
        273·
        11 days ago

        Colour me surprised, Bloomcole with another shit-tier take. I only don’t block them because they by far have my lowest Voyager tracked user score, -83 as of this comment, and I’m curious to see how low it’ll go simply by incidental Bloomcole exposure.

        • AHamSandwich@lemmy.worldEnglish
          111·
          11 days ago

          Checked their post history, did not disappoint. Check out where they respond to their own moderated, removed comment in a two week old dead post. They had a bit of a tantrum when I pointed that out.

        • gwilikers@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          10 days ago

          Ooooh. I had a feeling this was a thing. Got here via another post and was just blown away by how bad this take was.

      • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
        203·
        11 days ago

        Not sure if we are talking about the same George Orwell here or how you came to the conclusion that he was a “right-wing POS” - he was definitely not.

        • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
          83·
          11 days ago

          Yeah that comment is a weird take. I think he was in the British army nd stationed in India, he wrote a bit about that, both fiction and non fiction. It’s been a long time since I’ve read any of that. I recall it was nuanced and contextual.

          Maybe that commenter can cite some specific examples to back that up.

        • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldEnglish
          513·
          11 days ago

          He ratted out left -wing resistance in Spain among other things.
          You clearly know nothing about him.

          Edit: Wikipedia is a shit source, which again is proven.

      • Mrkawfee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        513·
        11 days ago

        Yep. I read some of his non fiction and he was clearly. a little Englander xenophobe. I have no doubt he would have supported Brexit and be hostile to.immigrants if he was around today.

        • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldEnglish
          812·
          11 days ago

          Very much hated blacks and gays. He stole the Animal farm idea that was about nazism and made it into anti-communist propaganda.
          Also tried to rape a girl when he wasn’t busy being a rat and snitching on left-wing elements he infiltrated.
          Total scum.