I recently received a mail from Redacted concerning Palantir below.
To say that this is concerning is an understatement.
The prospects of AI are huge but so are the risks as explained.
Mankind faces gigantic disruptions which will combine with a forth turning event in the coming years. This is when civilization fall and rise. The problem this time is that we have a rather clear understanding of what doesn't work and will therefore fail, the outdated imperialistic Western model, but no idea whatsoever of what could replace it.
We have succeeded beyond our dreams in creating a materialistic world, which has fulfilled our needs for food, energy and goods to the detriment of our psychological well being. In other words, a detailed understanding of "things" and a complete lack of grasping the importance of the relations between those things.
This is the ultimate and illusory, because it is unstable, victory of the left brain over the right holistic hemisphere. Worse, AI is us, or rather, this modern interpretation of us, on steroid.
In consequence, we are creating a world which will soon be unlivable for humans. This is already obvious in Japan where unfortunately the country because of its recent history of decline is 10 to 15 years ahead. It is a world without jobs, human contacts or family, and therefore without future for young people. This is why fertility rates are falling everywhere to catastrophic levels.
Countries are focusing on the external threat but historically, the main danger always comes from inside. Contrary to what we are told, the Germans didn't conquer Rome. They conquered a hollowed, destitute version of a once brilliant civilization. We are currently in the process of creating a similar empty shell of what not so long ago was equally a global achievement.
At a time when we desperately need new ideas, we have systems rounding the wagons on outdated principles. Worse, AI is accelerating this trend instead of opening our minds. Can this be inverted? AI is telling me "yes" but when does it ever answer negatively to our questions?
Photo credit: AI-generated image (ChatGPT/OpenAI)
The U.S. military is stationed just outside of Gaza using Palantir software to track Palestinians and use AI to "shrink the kill chain."
A new report from 972 Magazine lays out how a Palantir program called Maven can pull data from satellites, drones, intercepted calls, and basically the entire digital footprint of Gaza to “shrink the kill chain.” That’s Palantir’s own term.
What does that mean? It means to kill people faster. A soldier sees a target on a screen and an AI instantly sweeps their life, associations, movement, and now their social media history to generate a justification to kill them in real time. The military is also using an AI program called Dataminr, which can scrape social networks to produce what it calls “risk intelligence.” Said something online five years ago? Mentioned the wrong group? Liked the wrong post? Fire!
And as terrifying as this is, the worst mistake you could make is assuming it stays over there. Palantir has openly lobbied to deploy these systems inside the United States during periods of “domestic unrest.” Combine that with an administration that believes “domestic terrorists” are a meaningful internal category, and it’s not hard to guess where this is headed.
Domestic terrorists are not a thing for a reason. The Constitution does not allow the government to label dissenters as terrorists. If it could, that would give federal agencies the same surveillance powers Israel uses against Palestinians to monitor, catalog, investigate, and neutralize political opponents.
The federal government can prosecute crimes and seek warrants for suspected criminals. It cannot prosecute ideology. It cannot target citizens for their beliefs.
But the software exists now and once you build a kill chain, the only thing that changes is the target. Switch “Hamas fighters” to “domestic extremists,” and the machinery stays exactly the same. These systems create permanent, AI-generated enemy lists that never expire. “Optimizing the kill chain” also means automating the propaganda chain and expanding the pool of people flagged as suspicious.
That’s why this is genuinely dystopian.
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