Palantir CEO Alex Karp has called out the state of the AI industry, saying it’s “completely insane” that the technology is being used in areas such as the military and national security.
In a passionate interview with CNBC Shout BoxThe controversial billionaire also lashed out at major AI companies such as OpenAI, saying he spoke to top CEOs outside the industry who were “furious” about the way some companies were doing business.
Karp also accused some large AI companies of imposing a “wealth tax” on businesses by charging high fees for their services, while collecting data that could be used to improve their own AI models and tools.
“Completely false”
Karp’s ire has been particularly focused on the token model used by Anthropic and OpenAI, especially as costs continue to rise but companies seek a better return on investment.
“I’m not throwing shade at them, but something is definitely wrong,” he said. “The fundamental view among businesses in this country is that I’m going to relax and waste my time with tokens.”
This includes a range of Chinese companies, with Karp warning the US not to underestimate the speed of progress seen in its arch rival.
The rising prices of AI have led many companies to turn to creating and training their own models, rather than relying on outside vendors, with so-called “open-weight” models able to perform at a fraction of the cost.
Karp’s frustration was clearly visible, with a CNBC host commenting, “You look pretty angry,” with the CEO responding, “That’s the voice of corporate America coming through me.” »
To bolster its own support, Palantir recently announced a major partnership with Nvidia that will see the latter’s AI services used to create custom models for US government agencies.
“What connects me to Nvidia, and I think that’s what technical customers want, which is control of their compute, their models, their data stack and their alpha,” Karp said. CNBC. “They want to know that they own the means of production. They’re not being transferred to someone else.”
This follows recent criticism from the US government of companies such as Anthropic, whose Mythos 5 and Fable 5 AI models were deemed a national security risk and were shut down shortly after their release.
Karp went on to criticize the US government for its reliance on AI companies in creating new technologies for the military and national security.
“Are we really going to hand over the battlefield of this country to the Silicon Valley consensus? That’s completely insane,” he said.
Follow TechRadar on Google News And add us as your favorite source to get our news, reviews and expert opinions in your feeds.
