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New York City hospitals drop Palantir as controversial AI firm expands in UK
- ar_writer 7mo agoPalantir is the most evil company nowadays.
- whiterose1214 7mo ago[flagged]
- quentindanjou 7mo ago[self redacted as the above comment was obviously a troll]
- ianm218 7mo agoI think he is implying that their enterprise contracts are all on prem and airgapped? Seems unlikely to me they do that for all their customers but they likely do for the government ones anyway.
- 0x3f 7mo agoIt's not necessarily airgapped but yes. Air gapping is a bit much for hospital data, which after all does have to be readily accessible to the people working at the hospital or group of hospitals.
- mhh__ 7mo agoI know nothing about palantir in particular but typically these software stacks have a bunch of random crap in them to deal with fetching data from other system's the customer has.
- dmix 7mo ago> Then explain how they do surveillance and analytics They work with law enforcement agencies and help them process data they legally collect into other government databases. Their main product is merging data from various databases and adding a UI layer for analysis. Basically, Palantir is a data integration company that works for government and larges businesses under contract. Some data they get hired to work on includes surveillance data and military intelligence collection.
- 0x3f 7mo ago> ah? Then explain how they do surveillance and analytics (from the above article contract). The base necessity for doing this work is... data, and the data is somewhere, stored. It's on prem at the customer.
- whiterose1214 7mo agoThere's a bizarre conspiracy going around that Palantir is some all-seeing force in the world trying to turn everyone into mindless drones. In reality, it's just a company that—like it or not—has been relatively successful at securing massive contracts with the government and major corporations. In a healthcare context, internal pricing and patient data are heavily protected by law. If Palantir were as guilty of surveilling your medical data as you allege, that would be tremendously illegal, and companies much larger and more influential would have strong legal grounds to sue it into oblivion. If you think Palantir has a tight grip on the government, consider the influence of the health systems it works with—some of which are the largest employers in their states. The idea that an all-powerful company can control the government doesn’t make sense if smaller companies, which donate less, are somehow exerting unchecked control over larger ones. Of course, most of these concerns stem from two things: (1) its approach to autonomous warfare and (2) concerns about immigration surveillance. Autonomous warfare is coming, whether you like it or not. Palantir’s role in that is not related to its work in the commercial sector—unless you're suggesting they’re holding back potential revenue by not selling highly advanced robotics to corporate clients. Concerns about immigration surveillance are also somewhat overstated because, again, Palantir legally cannot use data from its commercial work (unless one of its clients severely mismanaged their contract). In that case, it’s really the U.S. government you should be criticizing — not the contractor simply trying to make money.
- bilbo0s 7mo ago>Like it or not, there really isn't any other company at this scale capable of doing the sort of work Palantir That’s only making European entrepreneurs salivate at all of that sweet EU funding they can suck up to replicate PLTR in service of their sovereignty initiatives.
- fakedang 7mo agoEurope is currently lagging on the cloud front, the AI front and even the SaaS front. They can't even wean themselves off of MS Office ffs, after all the shenanigans Microsoft and the US have pulled against them. I have no hopes of the EU building anything that can replicate even 25% of Palantir.
- holoduke 7mo agoAnd not forget hardware. All they have is meaningless leaders with zero vision. My dumb AI claw tool has better view of the world than they do. They might as well be replaced by those AI agents. Probably better outcome that current
- 0x3f 7mo agoThey only have to replicate Palantir marketing and garnish it with a bit of nationalism. Not like the government is good at getting its money's worth in the end.
- fakedang 7mo agoTrust me, they can't even do that.
- tombert 7mo agoI don't think people are accusing Palantir of criminally misusing the data. The government rewrites the laws around what these analytics firms are capable of, and as such Palantir operates in that space. Whether or not it's "illegal" doesn't change the fact that what they're doing is creepy Big Brother shit. Also bullshit that they don't store data.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoThe law is generally a bad proxy for whether or not society approves of xyz commercial behavior
- tombert 7mo agoIt seems like letting a company like Palantir anywhere near private medical data is a pretty bad idea. I am happy NYC is doing this.
- Manuel_D 7mo ago[flagged]
- gullies 7mo agoI heard that they lock data by using proprietary formats. MSFT does not do that.
- easterncalculus 7mo agoThey literally did. XLS was proprietary until Microsoft completely cornered the spreadsheet software market.
- drnick1 7mo agoPeople should not use proprietary formats for obvious reasons, but XLS has been largely reverse engineered.
- nradov 7mo agoIn fairness to Microsoft, when the XLS file format was first defined about 40 years ago all of their competitors also used proprietary file formats. Back then open file formats for complex, structured data weren't really a thing. I suppose in theory they could have used SGML but that wouldn't have been very practical given the severely limited hardware resources at the time.
- vovavili 7mo agoLocking users behind proprietary data formats is _literally_ the sole point of Microsoft Office.
- crimsoneer 7mo ago
- willis936 7mo agoWhy are so many entities dealing with Palantir? They are a poison pill for customers.
- 0x3f 7mo agoThey don't have in-house talent to implement what they want. The same reasons they used to hire Deloitte/EY/KPMG/PwC. Palantir is one rung up from those places when it comes to talent/ability to deliver.
- senkora 7mo ago+1. Think of it like a consulting shop that can deliver customized software instead of just slide decks and excel workbooks.
- paxys 7mo agoPalantir is a glorified IT consulting company. You tell them "I want a system to manage patient records" and they will dispatch a team of engineers fresh out of college to build it for you while charging top dollar. They are able to get government & military contracts because of lobbying and influence, but generally everything you see about them online is marketing.
- OJFord 7mo agoCambridge Analytica was a political consulting company...
- MidnightRider39 7mo agoCambridge Analytica was much more successful as a marketing company, vastly overstating their influence and impact
- ar_writer 7mo agoThey don't need marketing. It's very well known what they do and for whom they work.
- varispeed 7mo ago"controversial" Everyone knows what's going on, but also everyone is too afraid to stand up for some reason.
- Manuel_D 7mo agoWhat is going on?
- user3939382 7mo agoNYC schools just passed some AI guidelines as well. No training on student PII data, no final grades, etc. Unfortunately that's a pinprick for the behemoth.
- payphonefiend 7mo agoTheir main product is just consulting and PowerBI but for government. So much hysteria online!
- danny_codes 7mo agoTheir CEO is a crazy person who seemingly wants to tear down democracy
- newfriend 7mo ago[flagged]
- danny_codes 7mo agoThiel is pro-dictatorship as near as one can tell. Karp probably isn’t sane enough to evaluate
- llm_nerd 7mo agoHysteria? Have you listened to Karp? Palantir pushes some pretty shit-tier BI noise to clueless executives (it's actually uproarious the mythology that has built around that company), and this weird creep talks like they're the masters of the universe. Thiel is another incredibly bizarre creep, and he sits as the chairman of the board. Both are very tightly associated with the Trump crime syndicate and the US government, which increasingly is the world's #1 threat, and should be treated as equally dangerous.
- payphonefiend 7mo ago[flagged]
- llm_nerd 7mo agoThe US is undisputedly the world's #1 threat. Like who do you think is even in the running? Massive military that has bombed ten or so countries in the past year, overthrown a couple more, threatened close allies such that they're getting blood supplies ready and bombs to remove runways. Enormous nuclear arsenal, all in the hands of self-dealing criminal halfwit pathological liar with malignant narcissism as the country flushes down the toilet. A "Department of War" leader who is a simpleton alcoholic clown who rails off "give me tough guy speeches" that he got from ChatGPT, gloating about blatantly illegal -- both in international and US laws -- war crimes, including murdering people in boats just by rebranding them "narco terrorists". A governing party that increasingly is stocked with INSANE fundy nuts who declare that global warming isn't real because the bible didn't mention it, and who salivate about unleashing armageddon. The country is basically lawless at this point -- a busted plutocracy -- and the securities industry has become farcical it is filled with such grift and absolute lawless fraud. No one holds a candle to that dangerous nuthouse. North Korea, China, Russia...no one is an iota of a danger that the rogue, war-criming United States of America is. And the "best" part is that we're entering the era of the worst nuclear proliferation in history because of the utter insanity we've seen in the US. I suspect many "own the libs" Americans aren't going to like what inevitably comes next.
- infinitewars 7mo agoJ.D. Vance and Peter Thiel's Palantir is reportedly getting the software contract for control of Golden Dome, an orbital weapon system built by Elon Musk. A weapon system capable of targeting any person on Earth controlled by a mass surveillance company. Wonderful.
- nottorp 7mo agoPalantir is an AI firm now? Thought it was a data collection/spyware firm.
- WatchDog 7mo agoI like to think of Palantir as JIRA or salesforce for killing people.
- easterncalculus 7mo agospyware Why is Palantir a spyware company, but Snowflake or Databricks are not? "Spyware" has an actual definition, and there are real companies that sell it, like Pegasus. It's not some catch-all term for what people call "evil".
- natebc 7mo agoIf they're not a spyware company then they really super duper picked the wrong name. Maybe they were just going for evil, in which case ... well I'm glad NYC hospitals have dropped them and I hope many, many more companies and organizations choose the same path.
- nottorp 7mo agoThe point is why are they suddenly an "AI" firm, not to debate the fine meanings of spyware. Are the other spyware companies that you mention in your post also rebranding as "AI" firms?
- tbrownaw 7mo ago> Palantir is an AI firm now? Of course. Everyone is an AI firm now.
- max_ 7mo agoAll AI companies are spyware companies.
- ktokarev 7mo agowhen private company is deeply embedded in public health systems it is just dangerous
- naasking 7mo agoPrivate companies are embedded in every healthcare system in the world, even public ones.
- ktokarev 7mo agoI'm talking about the extent of a single company's influence
- basket_horse 7mo agoI’m confused. Who do you think makes all the medical equipment like CT scans, MRIs, etc. because it’s sure not the government
- cat-turner 7mo agoPalantir can install a data backdoor at anytime with their software. If you haven't noticed that businesses are openly violating data privacy you aren't paying attention. I don't have trust in our judicial system if Trump pardons criminals everyday.
- hermitcrab 7mo agoDear UK government, keep Palantir the hell away from my data.
- zombot 7mo agoSending the vampire away after he drank his fill is better than nothing, even if it's too little too late.