Alex Karp is not happy with the AI Institute.
In a fiery interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, Palantir’s CEO said he’s “not throwing shade” at AI leaders like Dario Amodei. (“There is nothing more fun than having a private discussion with Dario,” he said.)
He then broke into their company.
“Something is completely wrong,” Karp said. “The basic mindset of companies in this country is, ‘I’m going to relax and waste my time with tokens, I’m not going to get any value, and they’re going to get my IP,'” he said of AI Labs.
Karp said company leaders have told him privately that they are concerned about AI companies accessing their data and their “alpha,” citing the advantage companies have in the marketplace.
“We need to build trust,” Karp said of the AI industry.
Many of Karp’s views are reflected in Palantir’s recently posted nine-point manifesto on the importance of “AI sovereignty.” It includes references to these concerns and condemns token maxing, saying, “Your data is your treasure. Transfer at your own risk.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned of similar concerns earlier this month regarding the loss of Alpha. He wanted the industry as a whole to avoid “a fundamental commoditization of knowledge.”
In the interview, Karp seemed to nod to the dispute between Anthropic and the U.S. government over the use of the model in certain military situations.
“Are we really going to turn this country’s battlefields over to the Silicon Valley consensus? That’s insane,” he said.
Karp described the culture of silence around AI. He said his leaders told him things like, “I’m paying for tokens that don’t create any value.” He said this is happening because “these models are completely and irresponsibly oversold.”
In fact, there has been a strong backlash against the token in recent weeks. While some companies used to token-max out (spend as much as they could on AI), many have recently begun to rein in spending and scrutinize efficiency more closely.
“You seem pretty angry,” “Squawk Box” co-anchor Becky Quick said to Karp.
Palantir’s CEO countered, saying, “No. This is the voice of an American company being heard through me.”
“Let me tell you, this is definitely an issue for this country because we are on the cutting edge of all AI technology,” he said. “But if you’re going to sell something three times too much, companies are just tired of it.”
He asked people to privately call the CEO and say, “I’m not going to quote you when Mad Karp says on TV that we’re furious.”
He said they would respond by being “twice as furious” as Karp.