Eccentric CEO (we already have Elon another is one too many …) wildly overpriced stock and company and also one without any ethics that’s super close to the Trump admin … I for one am praying this company collapses. I’d love to read a HN post about how they go chapter 11 and leave the public eye.
Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Engineers turn their nose at this, but look who has tapped into this wealthy revenue stream. This may be one of the most tone deaf, american imperialist sentiment, I’ve heard on HN for a while. Engineers who have any sense of morality have a pretty good reason to turn their nose at this, and there is no but needed to follow that sentence.
If you read the comment a little more closely, it is very obvious that the "this" engineers turn their noses up at is the flexible model full of glue code, ala Salesforce, as opposed to "good architecture". It's more or less in the same vein as pointing out that WordPress powered a massive chunk of the Internet despite violating almost every good coding practice you can name, and that getting things done is what make…
That is why I called it tone deaf, I admit the part about American Imperialism may have been unwarranted (may is in emphasis for a reason).
This engineer turned their nose at the bad architecture and glue code, but neglected to mention the total lack of morality from Palantir. I would argue that abandoning morality and aiding the American imperalist machine in its war against human rights and dignity, has been a much bigger reason for Palantir’s success then their lack of good engineering practice. They are willing to get paid for something most people morally object to. Lots of engineers are willing to abandon their craftsmanship if it pays well enough, few their morals.
Perhaps I read too much into this absence, in which case the post is only tone deaf, but I favor the read where this absence was intentional, in which case it is both tone deaf and American imperialist.
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Palantir's secret weapon is the closeness and affinity to the DoD. The tech stack ontological model is flexible like Salesforce so that it can be jammed into any task or contract quicky. It isn't engineered, it's glued in. They're able to do this fast because they have a flexible model and because they have the friendly relationships. Their moat deepens every year with every new integration. It's smart as hell, actua…
Palantir does not have infinity money, and 'ontology' is a buzzword. They're a gov. contracting agency, with some re-usable components, that's it. If they deliver stuff that works, good, if not, bad. There's nothing interesting about 'ontology'
Ontology is not a buzzword. It's precision nomenclature.
We've been using ontology well before RDF and the semantic web. It precisely describes their flexible engineering approach of using entities, definitions, and relationships.
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#44I tried reading but this
[begin]
#### The Paradigm Shift Brought by Palantir: Ontology as an Operational Layer
The *"Ontology"* strategy by Palantir, explained in this book, is a paradigm shift that fundamentally breaks this deep-rooted disease of silos.
In the context of knowledge engineering and the semantic web, the widely cited academic definition of "ontology" is an "explicit specification of a conceptualization" by Gruber (1993).
Furthermore, Studer et al. (1998) expanded on this, proposing the definition of a "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization."
This transition from "data just for viewing" to "data that directly drives the business" is the key to true digital transformation in the AI era.
[end]
Just gave me brain damage. Please for the love of god just go straight to the point. Just give me the prompts that wrote all of this.
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Palantir's secret weapon is the closeness and affinity to the DoD. The tech stack ontological model is flexible like Salesforce so that it can be jammed into any task or contract quicky. It isn't engineered, it's glued in. They're able to do this fast because they have a flexible model and because they have the friendly relationships. Their moat deepens every year with every new integration. It's smart as hell, actua…
> Palantir's secret weapon is the closeness and affinity to the DoD. Is it a secret? I got an impression that it has been well known. How could you get any big number contracts without former secretaries or retired generals in your board or in your ‘consulting’ team?
I'm quipping about the title, sorry.
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#46palantir doesn't do revolutionary things in terms of back-ends. matter of fact, their apps are at best mid. I'd rate them 3/10 compared to alternatives that can do similar things. Their front end is the real differentiator. Their bread-and-butter is a few things 1) Willing to do dirty/harmful things no one else will touch 2) Making data and data analysis accessible to cops, dhs, anyone that is especially tech-averse…
> Ultimately, the bigger problem is that even in crowds like HN's, no one seems to have a good idea of what should be done about governments abusing datascience so efficiently. The general-populace/crowd/mob has already lost this game. Govts/Companies (all of them irrespective of ethics/democracy/etc.) are doing what they want with data and datascience. The populace is easily propagandized/distracted from reality and…
You can't fight this with tech. The problem is not technological. You don't have the data to fight with either. You could live in an igloo in the arctic with no tech on hand you'll still show up in palantir's hits (unless you were born there and have nothing to trace you back to civilization). Those organizations you mention might help with corporate surveillance capitalism, but not government data mining and surveillance. Palantir is not the same as Cambridge analytica, they're more similar to Microsoft and Google. In simpler terms, they provide the sql db, sql client, and the db admins to manage the data, as well as support to train users. They don't do the analysis and action on objectives for governments, they're not a consultancy firm like cambridge.
Under rule of law, you need laws. Outside of rule of law, well..
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ultimately, the bigger problem is that even in crowds like HN's, no one seems to have a good idea of what should be done about governments abusing datascience so efficiently. The general-populace/crowd/mob has already lost this game. Govts/Companies (all of them irrespective of ethics/democracy/etc.) are doing what they want with data and datascience. The populace is easily propagandized/distracted from reality and…
You can't fight this with tech. The problem is not technological. You don't have the data to fight with either. You could live in an igloo in the arctic with no tech on hand you'll still show up in palantir's hits (unless you were born there and have nothing to trace you back to civilization). Those organizations you mention might help with corporate surveillance capitalism, but not government data mining and surveil…
You missed the point.
The idea is to protect oneself by using various techniques of deception/reflexive control through stratagems like "poisoning the well", "borrow a knife", "misdirect/misinform" etc. to present different contradictory information/personas/overload-data to "The System" thus obfuscating/masking reality.
You mess-up the raw data and then use reflexive control techniques to allow them to draw inferences from a set that you have predetermined.
Technology, mass commoditized and given easy access to, is central here and should be spearheaded by the organizations i mentioned due to their reputation cachet eg; Tor/Tails/Proxies/Vpns/Secure OSes/Protocols/etc. Simultaneously they should also push for legislation for stricter govt. control over data usage/companies eg. GDPR/etc.
The populace also needs to educate themselves on techniques of Propaganda/Manipulation by reading the works of the authors i mentioned earlier. This will sharpen their critical thinking skills which is a must-have today.
Palantir is very much in the vein of Cambridge Analytica except that they have expanded vastly on its theme and gained "legitimacy". People need to study all about CA and then extrapolate it to today's AI capabilities if they want to understand the shape of things to come.
Some References:
Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA by Edward Jay Epstein; For history/ideas/themes/motivation for further study on a complex subject.
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda:_The_Formation_of_M...
Reflexive Control - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexive_control
Psychographics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychographics
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read the comment a little more closely, it is very obvious that the "this" engineers turn their noses up at is the flexible model full of glue code, ala Salesforce, as opposed to "good architecture". It's more or less in the same vein as pointing out that WordPress powered a massive chunk of the Internet despite violating almost every good coding practice you can name, and that getting things done is what make…
That is why I called it tone deaf, I admit the part about American Imperialism may have been unwarranted (may is in emphasis for a reason). This engineer turned their nose at the bad architecture and glue code, but neglected to mention the total lack of morality from Palantir. I would argue that abandoning morality and aiding the American imperalist machine in its war against human rights and dignity, has been a much…
I don't think it's at all fair to make this kinds of inference from what was written, you'd have to make huge assumptions, and also take an ideological perspective as well. It might be a perfectly valid critique ... but it can't be at all inferred from the comment.
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#49It's just view, materialized view, udf, stored procedure in fancy corp speak.
> fancy corp speak
Perhaps gov contractor speak would be more accurate. I'd think a corp with an org sufficiently aligned to their business value and profit motive wouldn't stand for the fancy speak either
Re: Palantir's secret weapon isn't AI – it's Ontology. An open-source deep dive
#50palantir doesn't do revolutionary things in terms of back-ends. matter of fact, their apps are at best mid. I'd rate them 3/10 compared to alternatives that can do similar things. Their front end is the real differentiator. Their bread-and-butter is a few things 1) Willing to do dirty/harmful things no one else will touch 2) Making data and data analysis accessible to cops, dhs, anyone that is especially tech-averse…
> many police departments disqualify based on IQ test results measuring too high
This claim is unsupported by publicly available sources AFAICT.
https://www.google.com/search?q=verify+claim+many+police+dep...