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Palantir's Peter Thiel Thinks People Should Be More Concerned About 'Surveillance AI' (cnbc.com) 63

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel "believes that people should be more worried about 'surveillance AI' rather than artificial general intelligences," reports CNBC: The venture capitalist, who co-founded big data firm Palantir, said at an event in Miami on Wednesday that on the path to AGI, you get surveillance AI, which he described as a "communist totalitarian technology." Those that are worried about AGI aren't actually "paying attention to the thing that really matters," Thiel said, adding that governments will use AI-powered facial recognition technology to control people.

His comments come three years after Bloomberg reported that "Palantir knows everything about you." Thiel has also invested in facial recognition company Clearview AI and surveillance start-up Anduril. Palantir, which has a market value of $48 billion, has developed data trawling technology that intelligence agencies and governments use for surveillance and to spot suspicious patterns in public and private databases. Customers reportedly include the CIA, FBI, and the U.S. Army....

Thiel, a well-known libertarian who also co-founded PayPal and holds a board seat at Facebook, said Silicon Valley isn't talking about AGI as much today as it was six or seven years ago... In the same talk, Thiel pitted AI against cryptocurrencies, saying that he'd prefer to see the latter one succeed. "If we say crypto is libertarian and that it is fundamentally a force for decentralization, then I think we should also be willing to say that AI, especially in the low-tech surveillance form, is essentially communist."

"If you want to frame it as a technological race ... I want the crypto decentralized world to work," he said.

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Palantir's Peter Thiel Thinks People Should Be More Concerned About 'Surveillance AI'

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  • wow no kidding (Score:2, Insightful)

    Guy who owns a lot of stock in a company thinks people should pay attention to that company, go figure.

    • Re:wow no kidding (Score:4, Insightful)

      by E-Rock ( 84950 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @06:27PM (#61923159) Homepage

      Except he's saying that people should be worried about what his company, and others like it, are doing. Not that it's good, but that it's a force for evil.

      Weird stance.

      • Unfortunately people like to be spoon fed. If you want to be concerned about surveillance AI, you actually have to be concerned about surveillance..
      • by Kisai ( 213879 )

        I have to disagree on his point of view.

        What it means to have "AI" in opposition of "Libertarian", The AI can do everything you need and relieve you of having to learn how to create medicine or survive, but a Libertarian should pretty much reject "help" any any cost.

        In reality. Libertarians are the people who go live off the grid and die alone because they didn't think their brilliant plan through. The only difference between Greens and Libertarians in this regards is that the Libertarians think they are so

      • He is asking regulators to step in which is the weirder reality of his comment. He is basically a growing voice to the fact that technology is not really agnostic. A piece of technology which it's growth is dictated by pure corporation capitalism will naturally slant society in a direction. We see this with Facebook. But the dude is likely invested in many different things, so undermining one a bit can make him seem like a good guy with likely not significant fiscal loss. Notice how he down plays one and pr

        • by E-Rock ( 84950 )

          Wait, now it makes sense since you point out he wants regulation. He's the entrenched player. Regulations put up new barriers that will stymie competition.

        • He is asking regulators to step in which is the weirder reality of his comment. He is basically a growing voice to the fact that technology is not really agnostic

          This is not necessarily uncommon (although not well-known.) Sometimes an industry working at the edge of risky things (or at the edge of public opinion) might want government to provide guidelines. Without them, industries are obligated to push the envelope for their shareholders' benefits until the point when things are pushed far enough to generate blow back.

          Better sometimes for a legal framework to draw a line (then you know well where you can operate and make profit without risking legalities.) Also,

      • I saw him speak probably 10+ years ago about Palantir, and the take away was more or less the same thing. That they have an insane amount of data on you, which should scare you, but is great for them (and their government customers).

    • "Trust me, I'm really evil! I promise I'm doing something bad!"

      Actually, he probably is just trying to plump the stock price, because most investor's ears perk up when hear a company is evil. "Evil? Money is the root of evil! BUY! BUY! BUY!"

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Whether you lean towards communist AI or libertarian cryptocurrency, Thiel has you covered. In bullshit.

  • by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @05:52PM (#61923097)

    He's warning against a reality he has a substantial role in creating. You can't take his words at face value, he's jockeying for some kind of advantage here as usual.

    • "If you want to frame it as a technological race ... I want the crypto decentralized world to work," he said.

      That's his angle. Some belief that crypto is going to save us from the surveillance boogeyman.

    • by waspleg ( 316038 )

      He probably wants to sell you AI to detect the AI he sold various gov't entities to spy on you with. He's a pure evil fuck bag.

    • by epine ( 68316 )

      Get a grip. That horse left the barn ages ago. What's he actually doing is enjoying shooting his mouth off to say exactly what's on his mind, because so much of the rest of the time, he's jockeying for some kind of advantage as usual.

      Reward offered: One black apocalyptic horse, last seen flying the barn under a blue moon glinting off a frozen lake in the fiery underworld.

  • He should know... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @06:26PM (#61923157)

    Peter Thiel "believes that people should be more worried about 'surveillance AI' rather than artificial general intelligences"

    He should know, given that he's one of the worst Privacy Rapists out there.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      He just doesn't want the competition.

      This doesn't mean he's wrong. Bad as he is, it may well be that "surveilance AI" would be worse.

      • It could be worse. It could be better. AI will always come down to the human process behind it. For one instance it could radically reduce voyeurism but on the flip side could reduce the privacy we generally have about when and where we are in our daily lives.

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          What it could do is drastically reduce the cost of surveillance, resulting in drastically increased surveillance.

          I doubt that the abuses behind the surveillance would be any worse, in principle, but when spread out to a wider populace, it would be likely to adversely affect a considerably larger number of people.

          • Right. The best argument for more AI surveillance would be to change process in such a way to reduce abuse but as you said it will still increase scale and thus abuse will remain equivalent. If the value this provides to society increases though, you have a relative gain in the abuse-to-"value gain" ratio. We still have to find the ways to reduce the abuse by utilizing AI though.

  • by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @06:29PM (#61923167) Homepage
    " Silicon Valley isn't talking about AGI as much today as it was six or seven years ago"

    Is that because they've once again worked out that it's 20 years away, and always will be? I look forward to the next generation making the same discovery in 2041.

    Also...Anduril? Sounds like it might have been set up to be related to Palantir, and also who out of the Tolkien estate agreed to them having these names I wonder?
  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @06:42PM (#61923185)

    He's one of the people that is profits off of the labor of others and doesn't want to give a penny back. If he's concerned then I guarantee it's purely out of self interest. He doesn't give a shit about other people and he never has because his entire credo in life has been, "fuck you, I got mine".

    If he's really concerned then maybe he should invest his own money into making sure it doesn't happen.

    • He's one of the people that is profits off of the labor of others and doesn't want to give a penny back. If he's concerned then I guarantee it's purely out of self interest. He doesn't give a shit about other people and he never has because his entire credo in life has been, "fuck you, I got mine".

      If he's really concerned then maybe he should invest his own money into making sure it doesn't happen.

      I'm pretty sure his concern is purely self-interest. The concern ain't wrong, though, and we should pay attention to it. A bad actor and the common man will inevitably share a common concern every now and then.

  • Not Communism.
    • by evanh ( 627108 )

      He's okay with Fascism and dictators. In fact I'd guess he's rather keen on the whole power trip himself ... dancing in the hypocrisies. No clothes and all.

  • I guess it's what they do with all the personal information they steal, and who they sell it to that actually matters.

    For me, I use Chrome for one or two things, some .io games (since they run like crap in firefox) and bookface.

    Let them fight collecting what sites I visit and anything I have saved from those sites, and other personal junk they can pry out of my browser.

    • by evanh ( 627108 )

      That's actually quite a new phenomena. Tracking us is entirely unneeded. Business worked just fine without this behaviour previously.

      Zuck/Thiel don't have to be such assholes but they do because they can. In a way they're both daring us to put regulation shackles on them. Calling chicken and laughing from atop their piles of cash.

    • I guess it's what they do with all the personal information they steal, and who they sell it to that actually matters.

      Unless you realize that you don't know that up front and that the cat is already out of the box the moment they have your data.

  • The civil liberties part of me is concerned about the destruction of privacy. The other part of me is content that someone will use the same tech to dismantle Epstein-tier pedophile networks.
  • by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:15PM (#61923319)

    fundamentally a force for decentralization

    That's not something that is desirable everywhere.

    Some things are more efficient when centralized. Some things are more efficient when distributed. Neither one is automatically better than the other, and anyone who doesn't understand that shouldn't be allowed anywhere near important systems, whether they are physical/technical, social, or economic.

    Money - the whole purpose of which is to provide a common system of value to enable trade between every part of society and the economy - makes no sense to be distributed.

    No one wants to have to maintain gift cards for every single store they go to, without being able to decide to use that value somewhere else.

    • A digital equivalent to cash requires neither centralization nor balkanization where everyone only has spendable assets for a particular location. Where'd you even get that ridiculous gift cards thing?
      • Is there more than one cryptocurrency?

        Are there companies that accept some cryptocurrencies, but not others?

        Time to stop living in fantasy land.
  • Not a damn thing has been done about tax avoidance. 10% thereabouts of the worlds money is sitting in tax free offshore accounts. Even the movement of money in and out of US banks does not tally - not in the slightest. By design, it is working for the ultra rich. What is truly great is you could send a picture of your other half, and instantly know how many others they have slept with. Yet, when it comes to politicians, not many reporters are airing their dirty linen.
  • Peter Thiel is not (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @11:24PM (#61923605)
    a libertarian. He's claims it, but nobody with any brain cells should buy it. He's ruthless, self-serving, cares nothing for any country or any system whatsoever, and has absolutely no moral code beyond "I gets mine". He says people should be concerned about "surveillance AI"? That's really rich. That guy made a ton of $$ off a company called Palantir. Look it up. Peter Theil lecturing us about the dangers of surveillance is a bit like Pablo Escobar lecturing an audience about how drugs are bad, mmmkay?

    The guy's a genius, and VERY successful. He's quite a bit smarter than me. But I'm smart enough to recognize someone with absolutely no moral compass. I don't really have a problem with this. I don't expect people to be consistent, to think like me, or to live like me.

    But for gods sake, don't bill him as a "well known libertarian". That's on the same level as "Trump defends democracy". It's utter horseshit, anyone with half a brain can see it, and the intelligent people need to call it out. Continuously. We should NOT be letting people like this be leaders. They want to make their money? Fine. Capitalism is awesome. But don't look to them for vision. They've got nothing to offer beyond serving themselves.
    • Theil is a pretty extreme Randian libertarian. If you don't know what this is then search for something like 'the courtroom scene from the fountainhead'. [americanrhetoric.com]

      Him and his ilk (which is all too common in finance/silicon valley) believe they're on some kind of biblical crusade to enlighten us numpty worker drones.

      I have no doubt Theil is a genius, but it was about the time when Jobs went on his vegetable diet to treat his pancreatic cancer, that I realised being a genius doesn't mean you can't have totally nut job

      • Really? I see your point, but Thiel seems perfectly happy to stomp all over others rights and privacy for his own gain, based on what Palantir does. How does that fit in with randian libertarianism? Extreme self-centeredness seems a more likely classification.
  • We can only be worried by one thing at a time? Wow! This makes life so much easier! Now all I have to focus on is spilling my glass and all the world's problems just go away.

    For real, though, we have more over 8b people on this rock—we can work on more than one thing at a time.

  • by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Monday October 25, 2021 @02:12AM (#61923757)

    Nobody should report what he thinks. He's manipulating, and you're doing is bidding if you amplify his influence.

  • This is odd coming from the literally #1 guy I would worry is funding mass surveillance AI
  • by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Monday October 25, 2021 @03:37AM (#61923895)

    not communism. It's the NSA that has the up-to-the-shoulder cattle glove on while reaching all the way up your ass to spy on your every communication.

    His comments come three years after Bloomberg reported that "Palantir knows everything about you." Thiel has also invested in facial recognition company Clearview AI and surveillance start-up Anduril. Palantir, which has a market value of $48 billion, has developed data trawling technology that intelligence agencies and governments use for surveillance and to spot suspicious patterns in public and private databases.

    So he's like Nick Cage's character in Lord of War: enters a horrible business because if he doesn't sell arms to mass murdering dictators, someone else will.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Thiel should be rotting in a prison cell instead of attempting to distract others from his own evils. He's one of the slimiest and most malevolent creatures to crawl from the ooze.
    • Thiel should be rotting in a prison cell instead of attempting to distract others from his own evils. He's one of the slimiest and most malevolent creatures to crawl from the ooze.
      Did you used to work at Gawker?

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