Palantir CEO Alex Karp says AI will upend society and that even people in tech underestimate “how disruptive these technologies are.”
“If you are going to disrupt the economic and, therefore, political power significantly of one party’s base, highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat, and military and working class people who do not feel supported, and you feel like that’s, you believe that that’s going to work out politically — you’re in an insane asylum,” Karp told CNBC on Thursday on the sidelines of AIPCon 9 in Maryland.
Karp said that, since AI will largely disrupt white-collar work, it will place greater value on vocational skills, upending the political paradigms of the Trump era.
“This technology disrupts humanites trained, largely Democratic voters, and makes their economic power less, and increases the power, economic power, vocationally trained, working class, often male voters, and, and, and so, these disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society,” he said.
Studies show that many white-collar fields are the most exposed to the initial wave of AI-related disruption. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could wipe out up to half of all white-collar, entry-level jobs over the next 1 to 5 years.
Karp has long positioned himself and Palantir as champions of the working class, with a particular focus on the US military. He’s declared the software company “completely anti-woke” and has pushed back against employees who have questioned the firm’s contracts with US immigration authorities.
The US can justify pursuing such a disruptive technology as AI only if it is coupled with national security, Karp said.
“These technologies are dangerous societally,” he said. “The only justification you could possibly have would be if we don’t do it, our adversaries will do it, and we will be subject to their rule of law.”
Later in the day, Karp sketched out what could happen in a world that doesn’t come together in the face of AI. In particular, he called for wholesale changes to the US education system to better prioritize skills-based training.
“The problem, the danger is if we don’t do these reforms, you are going to get the pitchforks, because then the only solution people are going to have is, well, let’s go after the unlikeable, rich people in tech, especially AI tech,” he said during a recent interview on TBPN.
While Palantir has not disclosed why, the firm recently relocated from Colorado, a state that has become more Democratic in recent years, to Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has overseen an explosion in Republican support.
Karp contrasted the future of America with that of Germany, where he spent significant time pursuing a Ph.D at Goethe University in Frankfurt.
“There are a lot of people like you guys, young people building things that feel hampered and are correct to feel hampered,” he said. “I think the American version, if we’re not careful, is not going to be the German version. I think it’s going to be, ‘Hang the rich.'”
