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Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

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Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#41

Post by cannabis_sam »

d--b wrote: post #17

Theses guys have no shame. Thiel is notoriously libertarian. He’s advocating for smaller and smaller government. Yet, the company he founded makes money by selling surveillance software to the government. Surveillance software that has some good use cases - in the fight against terrorism - but that inevitably empowers the government against its citizen. Palantir can be used to track terrorist, but it can be used to f…

The profit motive does not give a single fuck about logical consistency. Quite the opposite, if everyone else is constrained by trying to be consistent, it means there a market opportunity available by breaking free of the constraints.

Hence you get libertarians who build the surveillance state. It’s the inevitable consequence of right libertarianism (they disregard economic power); left libertarianism avoids this by consistently refusing to get any real power.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#42

Post by zdragnar »

bilbo0s wrote: post #20
zdragnar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course,…

Just as a matter of optics, some advice would be to provide more "national security" based anecdata. It's just a fact that people are going to look more and more askance at these technologies when they believe that the best example uses involve apparent street level drug dealers as opposed to, say, international terrorists with dirty bombs. And to be fair to layman, one is a law enforcement issue, the other is a nati…

They did do some national security related work as well, of course, but I was a bit intentional with the policing aspect.

Like any tool, it's not inherently good or bad. That means that we should give it extra scrutiny, because the more powerful it is, the more prone to abuse it could be.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#43

Post by mips_avatar »

d--b wrote: post #17

Theses guys have no shame. Thiel is notoriously libertarian. He’s advocating for smaller and smaller government. Yet, the company he founded makes money by selling surveillance software to the government. Surveillance software that has some good use cases - in the fight against terrorism - but that inevitably empowers the government against its citizen. Palantir can be used to track terrorist, but it can be used to f…

Libertarians believe in defense and national security spending, if not social programs.

I think most people believe that our government should be competent, if the FBI can identify a terrorist/school shooter before they murder people that saves lives.

Will these tools be used tyrannically? That’s up to our government, but luckily we get to elect them. If you want government agencies to change their mission or be reformed then get legislators elected who believe in this, don’t try to sabotage our government’s ability to do what it needs to do.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#44

Post by zdragnar »

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #18
zdragnar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course,…

And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors. No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!

Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate.

The far more interesting and valuable debate to my mind is the extent to which we, the civilian government, should enable the policing and military powers to use the tools, and at what cost to ourselves.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#45

Post by poisonborz »

zdragnar wrote: post #12
RockIslandLine wrote: post #8

Demonstrate how those programs do keep the country safe. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't mean that it's actually valuable work. ------ "Karp, whose Palo Alto, California-based company provides services to the Defense Department, CIA and FBI, blasted tech companies that refuse work with the federal government to keep the country safe."

It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course,…

This is a very valid, but still a very bad example. If we'd have remote mind reading tech, we could solve even more crimes. Everyone has the theoretical ability, therefore a right to protect his digital data.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#46

Post by toufiqbarhamov »

zdragnar wrote: post #44
toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors. No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!

Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate. The far more interesting and…

The excellent thing about citing a claim is that it obviates the need for trust, it’s about demonstration. My default position isn’t to assume that because you’re anonymous and online, you’re lying or misleading me, and supporting a claim with evidence only further reinforces your credibility. The absence of that evidence doesn’t make me consider you dishonest either, I’m just not going to put much weight in considering the specific unsupported claim you’ve made.

Beyond that, for the debate you want to have (a good one I think) all parties need more information. I can’t judge the efficacy of a system without dats on its past. Maybe the inherent asymmetry in information between TLA’s and the public makes this impossible in all cases, but not to the extent we currently live with.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#47

Post by writepub »

xiphias2 wrote: post #38
writepub wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no bait and switch anywhere. Employment is primarily at-will, and anyone can walk out anytime. Also, companies have certain identities in certain time-windows. Apple was a computer company in the late 90s, by late 2000s it had already gone through 2 identities: a music player company, to primarily a phone company. Employers cannot guarantee what work and markets they will and won't chase. Being a cloud infras…

If you listened to the TGIFs made by Eric Schmidt 12 years ago, it was totally different. It looked like there's enough opportunities to make a lot of money without going to the war industry (I can't call defence what the U.S. is doing). What do you think ,,Don't be evil'' means? We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings, sometimes working on weekends because we really though…

> We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings

You weren't really doing Google a favor, they were paying you well above market for your work. The fact that your nationality is a point for you to highlight is indicative of your warped expectations. You chose to move to America, no one forced it on you. And you chose to work for Google. If America welcomed you, allowed you to freely express yourself and thrive professionally, WHY is liking America, or supporting the defense establishment that protects your civil liberties and safety, and creates a stable socio-political environment for YOU and million others who immigrate and live here, such a toxic thing?

America is the world's most sought after immigration destination for a reason, it's OK to acknowledge the positives, and like it for the same

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#48

Post by zdragnar »

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #46
zdragnar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate. The far more interesting and…

The excellent thing about citing a claim is that it obviates the need for trust, it’s about demonstration. My default position isn’t to assume that because you’re anonymous and online, you’re lying or misleading me, and supporting a claim with evidence only further reinforces your credibility. The absence of that evidence doesn’t make me consider you dishonest either, I’m just not going to put much weight in consider…

Every system is unique, so citing statistics for one won't apply very well to another. Finding the statistics in the first place is going to be a problem as well.

It's a bit of a catch-22. Discussing the effectiveness of one strategy versus another could easily lead to bad actors changing their communication strategies to avoid what is currently effective. It is, in that regard, not much different than the reason why we don't compare the effectiveness of various secret agents and spies and their techniques in public forums; if we know, so too do others. The very effectiveness relies, in part, in not being part of public knowledge.

Finally, I think one point (perhaps the most important in this regard) that you didn't address is that these tools aren't necessarily allowing anyone to do anything new, assuming they had the data in the first place. They've taken what intel analysts were previously doing by hand for many years and automating gathering the data and generating views into it. Both of those save a significant amount of time, but I have yet to see a system that generates something that a human:

a) didn't need to verify first by inspecting the source data to confirm, and

b) couldn't have come up with given time to do the job by hand

The products themselves are only novel in their packaging. The amount of analyses that can be performed has also increased due to the broader array of data that can be ingested, but again, that in itself is only a matter of scale, not novelty.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#49

Post by xiphias2 »

writepub wrote: post #47
xiphias2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listened to the TGIFs made by Eric Schmidt 12 years ago, it was totally different. It looked like there's enough opportunities to make a lot of money without going to the war industry (I can't call defence what the U.S. is doing). What do you think ,,Don't be evil'' means? We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings, sometimes working on weekends because we really though…

> We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings You weren't really doing Google a favor, they were paying you well above market for your work. The fact that your nationality is a point for you to highlight is indicative of your warped expectations. You chose to move to America, no one forced it on you. And you chose to work for Google. If America welcomed you, allowed you to free…

Actually no, I didn't work in America, I worked in Switzerland, and worked for Google Switzerland, not that it matters. I was thinking of moving to US before I knew how much less people are payed there generally compared to Zurich, and how hard life is there compared to Switzerland in reality (it's very different compared to what I saw in American movies, but maybe that was my naivity :) ).

US ,,defense'' department is killing a lot of people that have done nothing bad. It didn't kill people in my country (I'm lucky that my country joined the EU), but it could have.

I'm generally against killing people, but I understand that it's part of the power play governments are doing. Still, I don't want to help it.

About the pay: yes, you're right, they payed a lot. When I joined Google the first time in my life, I loved it so much, I would have worked for free, just to be able to read the design docs that weren't available back then, and learn from great people.

Re: Palantir CEO rips Silicon Valley, accuses it of selling out America

#50

Post by writepub »

xiphias2 wrote: post #49
writepub wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We (non-Americans) were all writing code and staying at Google in the late evenings You weren't really doing Google a favor, they were paying you well above market for your work. The fact that your nationality is a point for you to highlight is indicative of your warped expectations. You chose to move to America, no one forced it on you. And you chose to work for Google. If America welcomed you, allowed you to free…

Actually no, I didn't work in America, I worked in Switzerland, and worked for Google Switzerland, not that it matters. I was thinking of moving to US before I knew how much less people are payed there generally compared to Zurich, and how hard life is there compared to Switzerland in reality (it's very different compared to what I saw in American movies, but maybe that was my naivity :) ). US ,,defense'' department…

How do you feel about Switzerland? Would you refer to Swiss patriotism as toxic? I wouldn't!

Switzerland, the country that made it possible for Nazis to store their wealth in numbered accounts, and still holds the largest reserve of illegal wealth of other nation's dictators and despots, that actively chooses to enable money laundering and refuses to take political sides because of danger of losing illegally stored wealth in numbered accounts to other tax havens!

Despite this seemingly evil characterization, if I were Swiss, I'd take GREAT pride in all the positives of Switzerland! Patriotism, in itself, isn't toxic! Also, reducing complex issues to single punch-line friendly lies, like America Defense == Evil, is futile. Watch how Switzerland can be reduced to Switzerland===Safe Haven For Nazi Gold! Which is false.

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