Key Points
- Palantir CEO Alex Karp claims that tech CEOs are calling for an A.I. pause so they can have time to catch up.
- Karp believes there is an ongoing A.I. race, and every tech CEO wants to grab a top spot.
Palantir CEO calls out tech CEOs for selfishly wanting A.I. to be paused
Karp is opposed to the idea that tech CEOs are genuinely concerned with the after-effects and risks of A.I. He believes that these leaders are calling regulators and governments to stop or pause A.I. products so they can catch up and remain competitive.
His views contrast with the open letter from the Future of Life Institute that has seen signatures from some of the biggest names in the technology industry. The letter has attracted signatures from notable people like Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and others who voiced a call for a pause in the release of A.I. research on Artificial Intelligence models larger than GPT-4
The letter also proposes a moratorium where the technology is not paused. An excerpt from it reads.
“if such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.”
While speaking in a BBC radio broadcast interview on Thursday, Karp said he believes that “many of the tech CEOs asking for a pause, are asking for a pause because they have no product.”
He added that the tech CEOs who have nothing to offer yet want more time to study Artificial Intelligence and come up with their own products. He added that “studying this and allowing other people to win both on commercial areas and on the battlefield” is a bad strategy.”
When asked if there is an A.I. race going on, Karp stated, “there is already an A.I. arms race, it’s just we’re ahead, [and] it’s not like if we slow down, the A.I. race will stop.” He stated that the most important thing at the moment is not building products for the public like GPT-4 but figuring out how A.I. can be used for military purposes.
He explained that Ukrainians have been using Palantir technologies and A.I. tools to increase the speeds and accuracy of their artillery, giving them an edge over Russian soldiers.
He added that the advent of AI-powered military software on the battle filed “just throws down a gauntlet to every single country in the world, especially [to] our adversaries, they cannot afford for us to have this advantage. And so, the race is on. There’s only a question of do we stay ahead or do we cede the lead.”
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