I'm not sure why I clicked on this article. I admit I expected something misleading, but at least about democratic as in "democratically elected". But this isn't even about "disrupting" the power of the democratic party, but rather about changing the relative value of different types of work, increasing that of blue collar work and lowering that of white collar work. The quiet part out loud, indeed.
> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best college educated woman, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -- LBJ remixed by AI
does anyone have a link to the full news segment? it's not clear to me from the clip in the link that he's talking about Palantir; he makes multiple references to "this technology" without ever clarifying what "this" is.
sounds to me like he's talking more about AI disruption at large
I'm always a little surprised at how these Tech CEOs are willing to go on TV and just spout nonsense. Firstly, 40% of college educated white women voted for Trump at the last election. Secondly, isn't the entire theory of Trump's support amongst working class voters an appeal to economic populism due to an erosion of their economic position? Aren't you literally describing a process that last time lead to a massive political shift in favour of those who were negatively economically impacted? Oh and you think all the white collar workers are going to lose their jobs, but you don't think that's just directly going to cause a recession that wipes out blue collar republican jobs?
It's difficult to (a) see how he can say this having given any real thought at all and (b) understand why he's going to on news interviews and winging it.
Do we have plausible explanations of how it shifts that power? Directly, because less-educated Republican men can wield it for whatever more effectively than more -educated Democratic women? Or indirectly, because Palantir will use it to shift things that way themselves?
I'm Danish and like every other western country Palantir want's to mass survailance us (and we apparently sadly want them to do it too despite the whole Greenland thing). I can't tell you how it'll shift power from the cultural elite to the working class because that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing AI shift power from the cultural elite, and, the working class to the technical/financial elite.
It does so with survailance and information. In a free democratic society you can jaywalk when no car is around and be ok. In a survailance state, you can't, because it'll hurt your social credit score. Similar to what we see in certain Asian countries, effectively making you a B class citizen. Jaywalking is just an example of course, because we've agreed that is technically illegal but basically every human when confronted with a situation like that outside of bureaucracy will think it's ok you crossed the completely empty road. They won't think it's ok if the road wasn't empty. Which is the nuance in the system, that the survailance bureaucracy doesn't have.
I like to think of it in dungeons and dragons alignments. Democracy is in the neutral zone, perhaps with a slight chaotic basis, but over all you don't want it to be either too lawful or too chaotic. If it goes too far either way the other side will suffer. The reason it can be a little biased toward chaotic is because chaotic people don't try to force their way on lawful people quite as much as the other way around.
I guess more working class men in America are lawful? Over all though, the people with the power will be the people with the information and the wealth to impact the bureaucracy.
To be honest it is a little bit hard to follow exactly what point he is trying to make, he doesn't communicate it very clearly.
The gist of it seems to be that he believes the job disruption will be greater among women (who are the slight majority of all professional workers -- but to me it seems AI is going to disrupt tech the most, which is generally still much more male dominated, so I'm not really sure why he believes AI labor disruption is likely to disempower women more).
Also not really sure how he believes that male/vocational workers will be lifted up, unless he means just relative to knowledge workers who just lose their jobs or take massive pay cuts. I happen to think if the job disruption for knowledge workers is anywhere near as bad as some predict, it won't be great for vocational workers either as it will both limit their demand (a large part of their potential customers will have less ability to hire them) and additionally they will find themselves with more competition for their own jobs as knowledge workers attempt to retrain for still-relevant jobs.
The explanation is much the same as for Peter Thiel’s ravings about the antichrist: there is no plausible explanation. The truth value of the claim is irrelevant, but it’s intended to influence a particular audience. Same goes for much of what Trump says.
You might be right, but I think it likely he genuinely thinks like this. He says a lot of similar things to small audiences and he is fairly consistent, and it aligns with a lot of tech billionaire thinking in general.
I don't doubt that he's a genuine, dyed in the wool misogynist, but it's hard to believe that he genuinely thinks that these technologies will somehow inevitably "increase the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters." At least, I can't think of any plausible scenario where that would happen. The only way it would happen is politically, i.e. redistribute wealth to them (which he almost certainly is not in favor of.)
That "working-class friend" aspect is just classic billionaire misdirection designed to exploit bigotry. Why do "highly educated, often female voters" come in for particular attention, given that Karp himself is highly educated (Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory!) and extremely wealthy (net worth ~$15 billion)? By all rights the working class should be much more concerned about Karp and his ilk than educated women.
You don't generally get to be a billionaire by blurting out your true innermost thoughts everywhere. Consistently positioning himself and his company's technology as a friend of the working class (hard to say that with a straight face) can give political influence that helps suppress rebellion against his technological ambitions, and even gain active support for it. He wants that working class all saying "surveil me harder daddy!"
No, but this is irrelevant. Of course, people don't believe that the billionaire class is aligned with the working class, which is why billionaires buy up media outlets to align public opinions with their goals. I think that a comparison with historical fascism is indeed appropriate here. Historical fascism saw itself as a workers' movement, but only insofar as workers were more easily exploited for the goals of an counter-cultural elite than the educated middle classes. Karp and Thiel may well have come to the same conclusion by observing the current US politics. And just as historical fascists recognized the disruptive force of the new mass media at their time, so do Karp and Thiel.
I'm not sure why I clicked on this article. I admit I expected something misleading, but at least about democratic as in "democratically elected". But this isn't even about "disrupting" the power of the democratic party, but rather about changing the relative value of different types of work, increasing that of blue collar work and lowering that of white collar work. The quiet part out loud, indeed.
Even more, as presented, it's about lowering the value of educated women (gender specifically called out) in favour of men.
Utterly horrific.
They should be careful about trying to teach me to drive a bulldozer...
> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best college educated woman, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -- LBJ remixed by AI
does anyone have a link to the full news segment? it's not clear to me from the clip in the link that he's talking about Palantir; he makes multiple references to "this technology" without ever clarifying what "this" is.
sounds to me like he's talking more about AI disruption at large
I'm always a little surprised at how these Tech CEOs are willing to go on TV and just spout nonsense. Firstly, 40% of college educated white women voted for Trump at the last election. Secondly, isn't the entire theory of Trump's support amongst working class voters an appeal to economic populism due to an erosion of their economic position? Aren't you literally describing a process that last time lead to a massive political shift in favour of those who were negatively economically impacted? Oh and you think all the white collar workers are going to lose their jobs, but you don't think that's just directly going to cause a recession that wipes out blue collar republican jobs?
It's difficult to (a) see how he can say this having given any real thought at all and (b) understand why he's going to on news interviews and winging it.
The last time fascists rose to power in the west, they were heavily pandering to the working class as well.
I'd take statements originating from their political camp as largely calculated.
I suspect you just see more coverage of tech CEOs spouting nonsense, than it being something unique to the industry.
[flagged]
Do we have plausible explanations of how it shifts that power? Directly, because less-educated Republican men can wield it for whatever more effectively than more -educated Democratic women? Or indirectly, because Palantir will use it to shift things that way themselves?
I'm Danish and like every other western country Palantir want's to mass survailance us (and we apparently sadly want them to do it too despite the whole Greenland thing). I can't tell you how it'll shift power from the cultural elite to the working class because that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing AI shift power from the cultural elite, and, the working class to the technical/financial elite.
It does so with survailance and information. In a free democratic society you can jaywalk when no car is around and be ok. In a survailance state, you can't, because it'll hurt your social credit score. Similar to what we see in certain Asian countries, effectively making you a B class citizen. Jaywalking is just an example of course, because we've agreed that is technically illegal but basically every human when confronted with a situation like that outside of bureaucracy will think it's ok you crossed the completely empty road. They won't think it's ok if the road wasn't empty. Which is the nuance in the system, that the survailance bureaucracy doesn't have.
I like to think of it in dungeons and dragons alignments. Democracy is in the neutral zone, perhaps with a slight chaotic basis, but over all you don't want it to be either too lawful or too chaotic. If it goes too far either way the other side will suffer. The reason it can be a little biased toward chaotic is because chaotic people don't try to force their way on lawful people quite as much as the other way around.
I guess more working class men in America are lawful? Over all though, the people with the power will be the people with the information and the wealth to impact the bureaucracy.
You can see a clip of the video of what he said here:
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2032087538802848156
To be honest it is a little bit hard to follow exactly what point he is trying to make, he doesn't communicate it very clearly.
The gist of it seems to be that he believes the job disruption will be greater among women (who are the slight majority of all professional workers -- but to me it seems AI is going to disrupt tech the most, which is generally still much more male dominated, so I'm not really sure why he believes AI labor disruption is likely to disempower women more).
Also not really sure how he believes that male/vocational workers will be lifted up, unless he means just relative to knowledge workers who just lose their jobs or take massive pay cuts. I happen to think if the job disruption for knowledge workers is anywhere near as bad as some predict, it won't be great for vocational workers either as it will both limit their demand (a large part of their potential customers will have less ability to hire them) and additionally they will find themselves with more competition for their own jobs as knowledge workers attempt to retrain for still-relevant jobs.
The explanation is much the same as for Peter Thiel’s ravings about the antichrist: there is no plausible explanation. The truth value of the claim is irrelevant, but it’s intended to influence a particular audience. Same goes for much of what Trump says.
You might be right, but I think it likely he genuinely thinks like this. He says a lot of similar things to small audiences and he is fairly consistent, and it aligns with a lot of tech billionaire thinking in general.
I don't doubt that he's a genuine, dyed in the wool misogynist, but it's hard to believe that he genuinely thinks that these technologies will somehow inevitably "increase the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters." At least, I can't think of any plausible scenario where that would happen. The only way it would happen is politically, i.e. redistribute wealth to them (which he almost certainly is not in favor of.)
That "working-class friend" aspect is just classic billionaire misdirection designed to exploit bigotry. Why do "highly educated, often female voters" come in for particular attention, given that Karp himself is highly educated (Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory!) and extremely wealthy (net worth ~$15 billion)? By all rights the working class should be much more concerned about Karp and his ilk than educated women.
You don't generally get to be a billionaire by blurting out your true innermost thoughts everywhere. Consistently positioning himself and his company's technology as a friend of the working class (hard to say that with a straight face) can give political influence that helps suppress rebellion against his technological ambitions, and even gain active support for it. He wants that working class all saying "surveil me harder daddy!"
Does someone really believe the billionaire class wants the working class hold the power ?
No, but this is irrelevant. Of course, people don't believe that the billionaire class is aligned with the working class, which is why billionaires buy up media outlets to align public opinions with their goals. I think that a comparison with historical fascism is indeed appropriate here. Historical fascism saw itself as a workers' movement, but only insofar as workers were more easily exploited for the goals of an counter-cultural elite than the educated middle classes. Karp and Thiel may well have come to the same conclusion by observing the current US politics. And just as historical fascists recognized the disruptive force of the new mass media at their time, so do Karp and Thiel.
Explain piss poor trump supporters? They obviously want billionaire power if they get social power to be openly racist