Microsoft and Palantir: Moving Up to Higher Impact Levels
August 20, 2024
Microsoft And Palantir Sell AI Spyware To Us Government
While AI is making the news about how it will end jobs, be used for deep fakes, and overturn creativity industries, there’s something that’s not being mentioned: spyware. The Verge writes about how two big technology players are planning to bring spyware to the US government: “Palantir Partners With Microsoft To Sell AI To The Government.”
Palantir and Microsoft recently announced they will combine their software to power services for US defense and intelligence services. Microsoft’s large language models (LLMs) will be used via Azure OpenAI Service with Palantir’s AI Platforms (AIP). These will be used through Microsoft’s classified government cloud environments. This doesn’t explain exactly what the combination of software will do, but there’s speculation.
Palantir is known for its software that analyses people’s personal data and helping governments and organizations with surveillance. Palantir has been very successful when it comes to government contracts:
“Despite its large client list, Palantir didn’t post its first annual profit until 2023. But the AI hype cycle has meant that Palantir’s “commercial business is exploding in a way we don’t know how to handle,” the company’s chief executive officer Alex Carp told Bloomberg in February. The majority of its business is from governments, including that of Israel — though the risk factors section of its annual filing notes that it does not and will not work with “the Chinese communist party.””
Eventually the details about Palantir’s and Microsoft’s partnership will be revealed. It probably won’t be off from what people imagine, but it is guaranteed to be shocking.
Whitney Grace, August 20, 2024
Comments
Got something to say?