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Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

wired.com

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Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#391

Post by [deleted] »

spwa4 wrote: post #301
reactordev wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the administration’s love of Axis of Allies, or is it allies of axis? They don’t know, they got distracted by the mustaches and the desire to conquer the world.

You do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since. And the US ... retreated. We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat.…

[deleted]

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#392

Post by BobbyJo »

cogman10 wrote: post #355
spwa4 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since. And the US ... retreated. We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat.…

The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done. Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, etc. US conquest was quiet similar to British conquest. They didn't make their conquered people citizens (that'd make things tricky for exploitation) so instead they make…

Vietnam and Korea were technically wars to stop conquest, no?

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#393

Post by coldtea »

spwa4 wrote: post #383
MiiMe19 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me looking for the soviet military bases rn EDIT: I completely misunderstood the context here, nevermind.

I live in the Netherlands. The closest one was about 260 km from where I live. Of course, not any more.

Was that on a country that went on a genocidal rampage just before and lost the war after killing millions all around Europe, which was decided to be divided in several parts, of which USSR got to control one, and which still developed into an independent country less than a decade later?

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#394

Post by pesus »

ryandrake wrote: post #288
seattle_spring wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never forget this spot on NPR where they interviewed a machine learning engineer working on AI videos. The engineer was purely focused on how cool the technology is, how real it looks, etc. The interviewer asked, "aren't you worried about this getting into the hands of the wrong people, and creating deepfakes for extortion and things like that?" The engineer paused for a few seconds, and then said, "gosh I never…

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in university, we used to have at least one engineering ethics class in undergrad. Have they stopped those? It sure seems like it, given how many engineers are out there who only seem to care about how technically cool and interesting their projects are.

I took one back in 2018 or so, and I assume it's still a degree requirement. If most are like the one I took, however, very few people seriously engaged with the class, and it's just viewed as a filler class.

It didn't help that the workload was a joke. I believe the entirety of our assignments were 5 single page "essay" responses to some ethical scenarios, and the professor seemed to hand out As just for writing enough. It probably took me less than 2 hours of total writing. I imagine most of the students these days are just having ChatGPT write it for them. We absolutely need to take ethics more seriously though, even if it involves adding more/more rigorous courses to the curriculum.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#395

Post by wizzwizz4 »

ericmay wrote: post #367
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing has meaningfully changed here Legally? No. That's what OP said: > The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent. Now if we're talking reality, the realty is that new precedents were set (president acting like a king) which revealed that there are not effective legal checks on US presidents acting like kings (or else we would not have a president acting like a king).

Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced…

> A king or queen needs no such justification

Sure they do! Take the king that the US's predecessor governments rebelled against, King George III. He was very much bound to the dictates of Parliament. From his Wikipedia article:

> Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of prime minister.[45]

Does this sound like something that would be said of an absolute monarch?

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#396

Post by spwa4 »

coldtea wrote: post #393
spwa4 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Netherlands. The closest one was about 260 km from where I live. Of course, not any more.

Was that on a country that went on a genocidal rampage just before and lost the war after killing millions all around Europe, which was decided to be divided in several parts, of which USSR got to control one, and which still developed into an independent country less than a decade later?

Yes, but you're leaving out the other 9 countries the Soviet Union occupied, and immediately started killing the population to keep their conquests: Poland, Austria’s Soviet zone, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

By contrast, the US retreated. And also didn't start killing any population.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#397

Post by Rebelgecko »

chasd00 wrote: post #362
leonidasrup wrote: post #8

Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company. I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.

> they are doing business with U.S. defense company. any time you're flying on a Boeing 737, 787, 777 etc you're doing the same. Just like every time you turn on a GE light bulb.

To pick some nits, the GE who does US defense sold off all their consumer products decades ago.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#398

Post by wormpilled »

therobots927 wrote: post #50
ethagnawl wrote: post #23

I look forward to all of these comments being Hoovered into their autonomous surveillance machine in short order. Also, yes, they are.

The anti Palantir / anti AI / anti tech / anti billionaire sentiment is just way too strong. Far, far to many people post inflammatory things for the data collection to really matter. Contrary to Karp’s fantasies, he will not have the capability to send fent-laced piss drones to every single person who’s ever criticized him. In addition, the more data they have on us, the higher the odds they have something “bad”. So…

Doesn't really matter if you talk shit online, it's just passive aggressive pressure relief. What matters is you not being able to effectively protest or do anything about it.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#400

Post by RIMR »

I work at a non-defense tech company, and it's basically a running joke that no matter how bad the job market is, none of us are soulless enough to go looking for work at Palantir, even if the pay is good.

I would have trouble trusting the kind of person who would work at Palantir. It seems like it could be career-limiting in the long run.

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