New York City hospitals drop Palantir as controversial AI firm expands in UK | Hacker News Reader

New York City hospitals drop Palantir as controversial AI firm expands in UK

theguardian.com

315 pointschrisjj145 comments

It seems like letting a company like Palantir anywhere near private medical data is a pretty bad idea. I am happy NYC is doing this.

Why are so many entities dealing with Palantir? They are a poison pill for customers.

They don't have in-house talent to implement what they want. The same reasons they used to hire Deloitte/EY/KPMG/PwC. Palantir is one rung up from those places when it comes to talent/ability to deliver.

+1. Think of it like a consulting shop that can deliver customized software instead of just slide decks and excel workbooks.

Palantir is a glorified IT consulting company. You tell them "I want a system to manage patient records" and they will dispatch a team of engineers fresh out of college to build it for you while charging top dollar. They are able to get government & military contracts because of lobbying and influence, but generally everything you see about them online is marketing.

Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting company...

Cambridge Analytica was much more successful as a marketing company, vastly overstating their influence and impact

They don't need marketing. It's very well known what they do and for whom they work.

I always tell people this - that Palantir is just IBM. Instant hate feedbacks from both left and right.

Left: They kill babies and have your poop data.

Right: They are so much more than that. That have super intelligence AI with drone puppetry. Have you seen the leaked dashboards!

Is IBM really the company we want to hold up as a moral standard?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II

They deliver on contracts or else they wouldn’t keep getting them

Which customers? Outside of the HN bubble, very few consumers know or care which entities are using Palantir.

With the controversial contracts they already have with the US, I think they had enough and should keep it that way...

Just saying.

NYC schools just passed some AI guidelines as well. No training on student PII data, no final grades, etc. Unfortunately that's a pinprick for the behemoth.

Palantir is an AI firm now? Thought it was a data collection/spyware firm.

  spyware

Why is Palantir a spyware company, but Snowflake or Databricks are not? "Spyware" has an actual definition, and there are real companies that sell it, like Pegasus. It's not some catch-all term for what people call "evil".

If they're not a spyware company then they really super duper picked the wrong name. Maybe they were just going for evil, in which case ... well I'm glad NYC hospitals have dropped them and I hope many, many more companies and organizations choose the same path.

The point is why are they suddenly an "AI" firm, not to debate the fine meanings of spyware.

Are the other spyware companies that you mention in your post also rebranding as "AI" firms?

> Palantir is an AI firm now?

Of course. Everyone is an AI firm now.

All AI companies are spyware companies.

I like to think of Palantir as JIRA or salesforce for killing people.

Dear UK government, keep Palantir the hell away from my data.

Sending the vampire away after he drank his fill is better than nothing, even if it's too little too late.

Palantir is the most evil company nowadays.

when private company is deeply embedded in public health systems it is just dangerous

Private companies are embedded in every healthcare system in the world, even public ones.

I'm talking about the extent of a single company's influence

I’m confused. Who do you think makes all the medical equipment like CT scans, MRIs, etc. because it’s sure not the government

Palantir can install a data backdoor at anytime with their software. If you haven't noticed that businesses are openly violating data privacy you aren't paying attention. I don't have trust in our judicial system if Trump pardons criminals everyday.

J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel's Palantir is reportedly getting the software contract for control of Golden Dome, an orbital weapon system built by Elon Musk.

A weapon system capable of targeting any person on Earth controlled by a mass surveillance company. Wonderful.

I'd be concerned if any of the parties involved were halfway competent. This is a grift for taxpayer dollars, nothing more.

Oh cool. All is well.

Their main product is just consulting and PowerBI but for government. So much hysteria online!

Their CEO is a crazy person who seemingly wants to tear down democracy

Hysteria? Have you listened to Karp? Palantir pushes some pretty shit-tier BI noise to clueless executives (it's actually uproarious the mythology that has built around that company), and this weird creep talks like they're the masters of the universe.

Thiel is another incredibly bizarre creep, and he sits as the chairman of the board. Both are very tightly associated with the Trump crime syndicate and the US government, which increasingly is the world's #1 threat, and should be treated as equally dangerous.

"controversial"

Everyone knows what's going on, but also everyone is too afraid to stand up for some reason.

What is going on?

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