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'I'm the new Oppenheimer ': Palantir's first-ever AI warfare conference
- justin66 2y agoAh, British press. It's a bit sleazy the way the quote was placed in a headline above a photo of the CEO of Palantir, who is certainly a douchebag but did not compare himself to Oppenheimer. That was some other douchebag. There was some useful stuff in the article itself.
- drcongo 2y agoIt is douchebags all the way down though.
- notaustinpowers 2y agoA douchebag said it, but I'd say it fits the CEO pretty well.
- wolverine876 2y agoThat's really looking for problems. The Palantir CEO said things much more extreme: As the moderator asked general questions about the panelists’ views on the future of war, Schmidt and Cohen answered cautiously. But Karp, who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock. He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.” Members of the audience laughed when he mocked fresh graduates of Columbia University, which had some of the earliest encampment protests in the country. He said they’d have a hard time on the job market and described their views as a “pagan religion infecting our universities” and “an infection inside of our society”.
- justin66 2y agoI don't disagree. So why not post an honest headline?
- notaustinpowers 2y agoGotta get those sweet, sweet clicks babyyyyyy
- deadbolt 2y ago> He said they’d have a hard time on the job market and described their views as a “pagan religion infecting our universities” and “an infection inside of our society”. Really sounds like something right out of the mouth of a certain dead fascist
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- subjectsigma 2y agoWhoa, hold up for a second. > He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere. You cited this as an example of an extreme opinion, but this is bog-standard MAD that’s been a big part of the US strategy since the Cold War. We don’t want to go to war -> Enemies won’t attack us if they think they can’t accomplish their goals by doing so -> Make sure they understand they will die if they attack us -> no war! (At least, in theory.) You may disagree with that opinion but it’s not at all extreme, that’s the mindset most of the military has. And it is rooted in the desire to prevent large scale conflict.
- racional 2y agoThis is bog-standard MAD that’s been a big part of the US strategy since the Cold War. Except it's not "standard MAD". In fact MAD doesn't apply at all to the Oct 7 attack (which was evil and awful and all that -- but objectively not at scale sufficient to trigger a MAD response). Instead he's calling for an unhinged, completely disproportionate response (nukes). That's simply not what MAD is or how it's supposed to work. In any case it's objectively not (contrary to what he claims) how the U.S. responds to such situations. It's just bluster, meant to push people's buttons. And he's doing to push his product, basically (yes in part for ideological reasons -- but at the end of the day, as a sales tactic). Enemies won’t attack us if they think they can’t accomplish their goals by doing so What you're referring to is general deterrence strategy. That's not what MAD is. It has a very specific meaning and you're getting it completely wrong.
- subjectsigma 2y ago[flagged]
- wolverine876 2y ago> this is bog-standard MAD that’s been a big part of the US strategy since the Cold War. That's not MAD as I understand it: The essential challenge of international relations is to create non-escalatory situations - situations where parties won't be compelled or tempted to engage in a escalatory cycle that lead to warfare, which is often unwanted by all parties to it but unavoidable. Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen with strategic nuclear weapons. Parties that are 'scared to death' tend to escalate; they are human; they panic, they imagine things and act on their fears. It's the warmongers and basement generals who imagine 'scared to death' tactics. MAD was designed to create a stable, non-escalatory, trusted situation. There were treaties limiting weapons and their deployment, hotlines, verification. Weapons were spread out, including in the triad (at sea, in air, and on land), to reduce the ability of the enemy to knock them all out, and thus to disincentivize a surprise attack. MAD is only used with nuclear weapons afaik, and only with Russia and now, probably, with China.
- dunekid 2y ago>"If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.” And what keeps on happening to Palestinians, had that happened to them, what will it be? But I get it, pretty standard for a war monger and profiteer to invoke false narratives on the mission to sell more weapons.
- pc86 2y ago> I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything I saw or heard at this conference. But when it ended, and I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been completely sucked out of my body. > More specifically, it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death. The vast majority of people there fell into group one. > I walked out of the panel in a quiet daze. > It was, frankly, jarring to hear a recent top US official defend Israel’s mass killing of Gazan civilians by invoking wartime massacres that not only preceded the Geneva Conventions, but helped justify their creation. > On the evening on the first day, Palantir had a social event with free drinks. The only options were two IPAs, and I had one called “the Corruption”. It was, bar none, the worst beverage I’ve had in my entire life. I stopped reading here about 2/3 of the way through but is this what passes for journalism? What hyperbolic nonsense.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death Seriously. What a juvenile way to frame war. War is absolutely about contest and strategy—and yes, money—and it also causes death. It’s always horrible, more horrible than the belligerents imagined at the outset. But it’s part of reality, like sickness and disease, and while I think we’ll eventually conquer it (as with those) it’s not something everyone can stick their heads in the sand about because it makes them uncomfortable.
- throw9474 2y agoHonestly the world would be better off if everyone "stuck their head in the sand" regarding warfare. Like quarantining disease, everyone just needs to calm down.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Like quarantining disease This is the opposite of sticking your head in the sand about disease. It's doing something about it, even at personal cost.
- throw9474 2y agoPretty sure Elon Musk is the new Oppenheimer trying to "win" at nuclear war... https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield https://wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
- totetsu 2y agoLooking forward to the future where Elon can drone strike me from space because of something I said on twitter.
- greenavocado 2y agoMusk is just the useful tool to get weapons into space, not the final server of death warrants. That responsibility falls onto the deep state.
- unclebucknasty 2y agoCan you describe this deep state? Is it in the room with us now?
- itsanaccount 2y agoAs dismissive as I am of the last presidents constant prodding of a "deep state" conspiracy, is it really any question that such a group exists? And in case rhetorical questions are lost on this site, the answer is no, and its not appropriate to mock. Practically we know working in companies "leadership" only has a vague capability to steer the sheep, and that control becomes more and more vague every day. It seems to be a direct result of the complexity of the modern world. Systems operate by a zeitgeist made up of their component parts. "Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" etc etc. The military industrial complex's defining culture is "we do the dirty work no one else is willing to do to keep western democracy safe" whether you agree thats true or not. I think its something to be noted if the powers and capabilities of this group are being expanded into tech corporations, who don't seem to have any defining culture other than make cash and retire.
- legitster 2y agoPalantir's entire business model is taking on customers/projects that the rest of Silicon Valley refuses to. Not only is there an "underserved" audience, they get to charge a premium and for worse products. The irony is that this is a good reminder of the harsh realities that Oppenheimer himself clearly grappled with - if you refuse to build it, someone with less scruples will.
- greenavocado 2y agoThe silver lining is that the people with less scruples might also be less competent and their solutions more fragile resulting in operational failure when deployed, in turn saving humanity.
- jnwatson 2y agoOr be less competent and accidentally destroy humanity. Both seem possible with imagined future AI-enabled weapons systems.
- to11mtm 2y agoThe bigger concern is that the failures are either ones that make society worse but nobody will fix, or, the failure is catastrophic (e.x. It didn't go full skynet, but who the heck knew -that- set of datapoints would trigger an autolaunch?)
- swatcoder 2y agoKeep in mind that operational failures don't always look like a quiet fizzle. Failures can just as well be catastrophic or can trigger further reactions that become so. I'm not sure there's a silver lining there worth looking for.
- legitster 2y agoMaybe. But based on what I have heard Palantir has no problem finding talent. There are enough people in the world excited about Palantir's... niche... that have people lining up out the door for new job postings. That and they have a much stronger meritocracy than most other tech companies feel comfortable enforcing.
- wolverine876 2y agoThe ability of the extreme right to promulgate talking points seemingly directly into people's beliefs, bypassing the moral, spiritual, and reasoning parts of their brains, is surreal. People just parrot stuff that is paper thin, that can't withstand even a little scrutiny. I know there is much research and obviously much practice on how to do that, but the effectiveness is extreme. Even people who have expertise and have known better for decades start parroting nonsense. > “Before we get self-righteous,” [former Chair of the Joint Chief's of Staff, retired General Mark] Milley said, in the second world war, “we, the US, killed 12,000 innocent French civilians. We destroyed 69 Japanese cities. We slaughtered people in massive numbers – men, women, and children.” I think to a great degree, with nobody standing up to this force and few barely acknowledging it, people have capitulated to it - what else can they do? - just accept what it says and does. And they have jumped on the bandwagon. From an article on domestic politics in Israel [0]: > It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12. > “These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.” It's not the content of the words - to engage in and debate the content is to play their fool - it's the power, the effect. They want to push the envelope as far as possible, open things up for extremism. It's a well-known strategy, well-used for propaganda, but people seem to have forgotten every lesson of the 20th century. From the OP: > But Karp [Alex Karp, Palantir CEO], who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock. It's a demonstration of power, a show of force; it's an attempt at intimidation, and many have abandoned even the extremely successful, powerful fundamentals of freedom, democracy, and the Enlightenment. In the US, even moderate Democrats jump on the bandwagon; look at many of them parroting the ridicule of even the idea of protest. I have little compassion for leaders; it's their job to stand up and IMHO they are effectively cowards responding to bullying; they are aligning themselves with the bullies instead of standing up to them. Sadly, even ordinary people are infected and parrot those things, without even examining the dynamics or content, much less the power. The world desperately needs a leader - a Churchill, a Lincoln, just about anyone - to stand up to it, to show people there are other, much better ways. Despite the BS propaganda, I think people are yearning for it, and that leader would find a world ready to embrace a good way to live. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/opinion/israeli-palestine-psyche.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/opinion/israeli-palestine...
- philbin 2y agoVirtue-signaling journalist goes to "how-to" conference on warfare.
- cypherpunks01 2y agoYou're saying you'd prefer zero coverage of an AI warfare conference, then?
- philbin 2y ago[dead]
- nen-nomad 2y ago> “The peace activists are war activists,” Karp insisted. “We are the peace activists.” They are literally saying, "War is Peace".
- tinyhouse 2y agoWar against enemies such ISIS is indeed leading to peace.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> War against enemies such ISIS is indeed leading to peace Better example is nuclear deterrence, which has effectively ended direct great power state-on-state conflict. War is never peace. But preparing for war protects an existing one.
- malermeister 2y agoAs we've seen by the wonderful results in Afghanistan.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- IOT_Apprentice 2y agoThe US created ISIS in Afghanistan via their proxy war with Russia. Reap what you sow.
- Lucasoato 2y agoSi vis pacem para bellum.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoI could see it as saying that the peace activists are on a path that will not actually lead to peace, but rather to war, and those preparing for war are on a path that will actually lead to peace. "If you wish for peace, prepare for war" is an old way of phrasing this. It's not a new thought.
- ninininino 2y ago> “Let’s say you’re operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza,” I asked the engineers afterward. “Does Palantir prevent you from ‘nominating a target’ in a civilian location?” > Short answer, no. “The end user makes the decision,” the woman said. It seems to me that the author of this piece doesn't understand that any system that claimed to be able to predict civilian's and combatant's locations better than someone with boots on the ground or eyes in the air on the target would be lying. Look at something like Healthcare charts. Nurses and doctors don't have time to keep systems updated or do data entry because they are busy triaging patients and saving lives. The first thing to go when you have ten things you're supposed to do but only have time for five is data entry. This is the bog standard complaint against all the technology being inserted into healthcare. War is the same but inverse (serving out death not serving out life), there isn't time to sit around filling in info. Armed conflicts are dynamic environments with a need for fast decisions on limited information and unfortunately it isn't really possible to have a Google maps interface with neatly labeled bounding boxes of "don't worry the bad guys aren't allowed to go inside these buildings, only the civilians". But if anyone would be able to keep a grasp on that information in order to limit civilian targets it would likely be those on the ground who wouldn't have time to enter their latest civilian vs non-civilian intel into a GUI for updating some targeting system, so you'd want that ultimate decision to be exactly where they've placed it, in the hands of the final end user. Anything else would be exactly the sort of "AI controls the guns/bombs/nukes" nightmare that we all want to avoid. Imagine the end user knows that the GUI is exactly wrong, the area marked in the system to contain civilians actually contains combatants and the building next door is marked in the system as containing combatants but really contains civilians (they have had camera on both or someone with binoculars observing or something) - and the system doesn't let them 'nominate the target' that they need to. At that point you can either nominate the civilian containing building and select a munition that will destroy both targets or you can do nothing.
- tensor 2y agoNothing about this is "AI controls guns/bombs/nukes." The AI simply gives predictions that humans must decide to accept or reject. And no, I don't buy at all that people on the ground in an active war scenario would have any sort of macro view at all. Without more to back it up I don't buy your claim.
- megous 2y agoSo Google's founder is into killing machines now... with an idea to automate them more, ... just like Google support I guess... What? :)
- psychlops 2y agoSo liability for collateral damage will move from the military to a corporate AI. A bug in a program to be fixed. The reach of war (already not needing approval of the people) will be cheaper and less accountable.
- indigo0086 2y agoAi has no more agency, will, or intent as the software warmongers currently use now. The problem is any collateral damage or mistakes will be defended zealously and resolved within the military organization in the same ways it is now
- psychlops 2y agoI wasn't implying AI agency and believe that AI is simply a marketing term. I'm suggesting they will shift the liability. In much the same way that "autonomous" cars crashes are no longer the fault of the owner and more of a corporate issue. But you are more correct. There is no need to shift liability when there is absolutely no recourse for military mistakes.
- lukeschlather 2y agoThe quote in the title is totally out-of-context. It's not entirely clear but from context it sounds like Mark Milley was just laughing because he realized that he's the "new Oppenheimer" as the current director of nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos.
- RACEWAR 2y agoNot to nitpick, but to engage. Can the quote be taken “entirely out of context” if the context itself isn’t “entirely clear”? Or does your interpretation of the quote and its meaning differ from the author’s?
- lukeschlather 2y agoThe way the quote is used in the title of the article implies that someone involved with Palentir is referring to their AI as a weapon of mass destruction on par with the atom bomb, but when the quote appears in the article it clearly has nothing to do with AI, nor is the speaker comparing himself to Oppenheimer's role in creating the first atom bomb, he's just noting that he is occupying the exact same job as Oppenheimer.
- RACEWAR 2y agoThe very elements that you use to argue for why the quote is being taken out of context can be spun around in favor of the interpretation that it is not. - Many hold the notion that the threat of AI is similar to that of nuclear weapons. - Gen. Mark Milley is one of the key “characters” in the author's account of their time at Palantir’s conference showcasing its warfare AI. - Milley works in Nuclear research at Los Alamos, like Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the lab’s director. Milley’s exact role with the lab isn’t mentioned and I couldn’t verify his exact position, but the present day iteration of the lab is ran by someone else. - A key theme of the story is how oblivious some key attendants and organizers are of the potential damage that warfare AI will have. - It can be argued that those in attendance are primarily interested in developing the means to victory on the battlefield at any cost that can be rationalized by credentialed minds. A parallel can be made between warfare AI today and the development of nuclear weapons during WWII. - Milley is comparing himself to Oppenheimer. He probably does not mean the he is the present director of the Los Alamos laboratory. It’s arguable that he is saying so in an attempt to amuse the author, much to the author's distaste. Note the pop culture references, the author's internal and external jabs in response, and the offering of state department swag (the pens and stickers). > “Have you seen Oppenheimer?” he asked. > > No, I said, but I’d read The Making of the Atomic Bomb. > > I thought he was going to talk about the hubris of people who build weapons of war. > > Instead, he told me he works in nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos laboratory. Reaching into his backpack, he handed me a few Los Alamos pens and stickers. These paragraphs and another half paragraph before the actual quote appears in the body of the article set the stage well enough to suffice for context. A bystander may or may not make the same connections if they were to overhear this conversation as it happened, but an attentive reader can due to the privilege of having intimate knowledge of everything that took place before the exchange and a few details outside of it. Whether it's conveyed via the actual conversation, or against the backdrop of the author’s publicized impressions during the conference and other elements that exist beyond it, the quote is not positioned inappropriately. We have to remember that this article is not a traditional “news story”, it is a subjective account. The connections that make the quote noteworthy may not be found by all and sundry, but I’m confident that the Guardian has a feel for its readership and the sentiment that they and others will have about their stance on AI, Palantir, warfare, etc. prior to reading the piece. I think the literary element at play is something like irony.
- seydor 2y agoBut what does Palantir do, that Llama3 can't do?