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NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

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Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#91

Post by ethanbond »

lmeyerov wrote: post #83
c1b wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot comment specifically on CHEETAS, but what I can say is that USG developing in house software solutions almost always produces a disastrous product that goes over budget and has extreme maintenance overhead. To see why, you can simply ask yourself: do you think that the unelected officials overseeing government agencies that embark on enterprise software development projects have sufficient expertise and ente…

Interesting, thank you for sharing! That experience speaks more to the perils of in-housing, not to why Palantir is the best COTS for specific needs here. Are there specific leading COTS here you view it so far ahead of for such a contract? Closer to our own practice.. Modern LLMs have basically reset the field for SOTA in this space, with Palantir, by definition, being behind OpenAI in the most basic tasks, and thus…

It seems like you don’t know what Palantir is. Nothing OpenAI does is competitive with what Palantir does. Palantir, like every other software company out there, is exploring what “my product + AI” means.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#92

Post by kmlx »

dwroberts wrote: post #51
cedws wrote: post #6

I just don't get it. NHS needs a big data platform so they go to a... spy tech company? Why are they so insistent that it must be Palantir that builds this, instead of choosing from a dozen of other consulting companies that don't have a dodgy track record? Ideally the NHS would just build it in house, but sadly it's a slow and bloated organisation unable to innovate (as most government managed things usually become)…

We currently have a Conservative government, and they hate the NHS. Anything they can do to sink the NHS or destroy its reputation and push people toward private healthcare is a win to them. I wouldn't be surprised if this Palantir stuff involves an extremely onerous contract, and probably terms that the NHS cannot even afford long term, and the Tories knowingly entered into it any way.

> We currently have a Conservative government, and they hate the NHS.

while somehow simultaneously providing it with the most amount of funding ever:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/317708/healthcare-expend...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/632289/nhs-england-healt...

but even with these colossal amounts, it’s still underfunded according to the BMA:

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-w...

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#93

Post by ethanbond »

asdadsdad wrote: post #85
cedws wrote: post #6

I just don't get it. NHS needs a big data platform so they go to a... spy tech company? Why are they so insistent that it must be Palantir that builds this, instead of choosing from a dozen of other consulting companies that don't have a dodgy track record? Ideally the NHS would just build it in house, but sadly it's a slow and bloated organisation unable to innovate (as most government managed things usually become)…

I honestly don't understand what's dodgy about Palantir. They build a platform to analyze big data and they have clients like government agencies, immigration control and law enforcement. What's the big deal here? Please educate me

Mostly its founding history. Funded by CIA’s venture arm, was basically built bespoke for the CIA and rest of the USIC. These days, yeah, at least a large portion of the company (+product) is a pretty normal enterprise software company that happens to build data platforms.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#94

Post by lmeyerov »

ethanbond wrote: post #91
lmeyerov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thank you for sharing! That experience speaks more to the perils of in-housing, not to why Palantir is the best COTS for specific needs here. Are there specific leading COTS here you view it so far ahead of for such a contract? Closer to our own practice.. Modern LLMs have basically reset the field for SOTA in this space, with Palantir, by definition, being behind OpenAI in the most basic tasks, and thus…

It seems like you don’t know what Palantir is . Nothing OpenAI does is competitive with what Palantir does. Palantir, like every other software company out there, is exploring what “my product + AI” means.

That's a fair surface-level view, but worth thinking through a bit.

Palantir is multiple main things, and a whole ton of custom software projects on top, and a good chunk of them rely on the quality of their NLP & vision systems for being competitive with others. My question relates to the notion that they are inherently the best when, by all public AI benchmarks, they don't make the best components and, in the context of air-gapped / self-hosted government work, don't even have access to them. Separately, I'm curious how they relate to their COTS competitors (vs gov inhouse) given the claims here. For example, their ability to essentially privatize and resell the government's data to itself and make that into a network effects near-monopoly is incredible, but doesn't mean the technology is the best.

I've seen cool things with them, and on the flip side, highly frustrated users who have thrown them out (or are being forbidden to.) It's been a fascinating company to track over the years. I'm asking for any concrete details or comparisons as, so far, there is zero in the claims above, which is more consistent with their successful gov marketing & lobbying efforts than technical competitiveness.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#95

Post by Barrin92 »

redcobra762 wrote: post #16
ramesh31 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must respectfully say that this company should not be allowed to exist. We are outsourcing state level powers to a completely opaque private entity with zero accountability. This can only end badly.

What does “state level powers” even mean? And they’re hardly “opaque”, at least not any more than any other publicly traded company is, and held to similar account. What do you think they do that’s so above-and-beyond what a non-government organization should be able to do? I wonder if you’re falling for a lot of the marketing hype…

>What does “state level powers” even mean?

In this case espionage and surveillance, traditionally domains of the state.

>What do you think they do that’s so above-and-beyond what a non-government organization should be able to do?

They're not subject to privacy legislation and limitations that the police is. There's a concrete exapmle of this, commercial storage of license plate data in the US is largely unregulated, so police units that have legal limitations on how long they can hold citizen data simply go to the private market and buy that data from those firms. That kind of circumvention of the law and outsourcing of responsibility is probably a large part of the Palantir business model.

Seems kind of insane to take your tax payer money and use it to buy surveillance data on you, a good chunk of which probably isn't even legal to otherwise collect and completely undermine the rule of law and democratic control of policing.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#96

Post by redcobra762 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #95
redcobra762 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does “state level powers” even mean? And they’re hardly “opaque”, at least not any more than any other publicly traded company is, and held to similar account. What do you think they do that’s so above-and-beyond what a non-government organization should be able to do? I wonder if you’re falling for a lot of the marketing hype…

>What does “state level powers” even mean? In this case espionage and surveillance, traditionally domains of the state. >What do you think they do that’s so above-and-beyond what a non-government organization should be able to do? They're not subject to privacy legislation and limitations that the police is. There's a concrete exapmle of this, commercial storage of license plate data in the US is largely unregulated,…

Espionage and surveillance is a misrepresentation of what Palintir does; every Fortune 500 company does similar if we use this definition.

And they’re not police, so of course they’re not held to that standard, just like you or I aren’t held to that standard.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#97

Post by 7thaccount »

itronitron wrote: post #61
7thaccount wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem sketchy just based off their name from the LOTR object. From Wikipedia: "A major theme of palantír usage is that while the stones show real objects or events, those using the stones had to "possess great strength of will and of mind" to direct the stone's gaze to its full capability.[T 2] The stones were an unreliable guide to action, since what was not shown could be more important than what was selectivel…

From my understanding, Palantir is mostly successful because of it's utility as a data aggregator within an organization. So yeah, you have to know how to use the tools available but it's not going to stop anyone from coming to the wrong conclusion.

I was mainly saying that if you've watched the LOTR films, the Palantir (where I assume they got the name) has a pretty negative conatation and to willingly take it makes me wonder.

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#98

Post by Terr_ »

0xy wrote: post #84
blue_cookeh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally the NHS would just build it in house, but sadly it's a slow and bloated organisation unable to innovate (as most government managed things usually become). This is patently false, a narrative often parroted by people who don't understand or have never worked in the NHS. There are many intelligent people in technical/digital roles in the NHS that innovate on a daily basis - heck, many build systems internall…

Given the NHS' costs continue to explode, and most of the cash goes straight to padding middle management, it seems easy to see that it's a slow and bloated organization. After all, the UK's health spending is increasing at a rate 2,000% higher than close neighbor France's is -- indicating massive fraud and waste.

That "increasing at a rate" vague phrasing makes me instinctively suspicious of abused statistics.

For example, suppose in 24 hours France's spending goes up +0% and the UK's spending goes up +0.001%: "Oh my god! The UK's spending is increasing at a rate infinity times more!!11"

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#99

Post by csteubs »

tptacek wrote: post #64
csteubs wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely accurate. L3Harris pumped so much ad money into the walkways at Dulles I'm surprised they don't have naming rights to a terminal. There was a time not too long ago where you couldn't listen to WTOP without hearing Mitre and ManTech ads with the term "Digital Twin".

Which like, seems entirely rational? You're a sales team pursuing a deal with an 8-9 figure outcome, of course you would buy a billboard on on the decision maker's commute, it's a rounding error expense.

Completely rational. It makes sense that an area with a highest concentration of defense/government contractors would see a ton of ads geared towards the procurement folks. I grew up in the beltway and interned with some bigger defense contractors in college, just pointing out that it's a phenomenon unique to the DMV area (with some more memorable examples).

Re: NHS to investigate Palantir influencer campaign as possible contract breach

#100

Post by [deleted] »

lmeyerov wrote: post #94
ethanbond wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you don’t know what Palantir is . Nothing OpenAI does is competitive with what Palantir does. Palantir, like every other software company out there, is exploring what “my product + AI” means.

That's a fair surface-level view, but worth thinking through a bit. Palantir is multiple main things, and a whole ton of custom software projects on top, and a good chunk of them rely on the quality of their NLP & vision systems for being competitive with others. My question relates to the notion that they are inherently the best when, by all public AI benchmarks, they don't make the best components and, in the conte…

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