AI is enriching many people. You may not be one of them, says Palantir CEO Alex Karp. problem.
In an interview with Matthias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Karp said that while AI is likely to raise living standards broadly, the scale of the benefits for those at the top will be vastly disproportionate to those elsewhere. Axel Springer is the parent company of Business Insider.
Karp said wealth inequality due to AI is “the biggest problem in this country.”
“The average person’s standard of living will improve, but the people involved will likely be 10, 100 times richer than they are now,” Karp said on Monday’s episode of Dopfner’s MD Meets podcast.
In past technology revolutions, the gap between winners and everyone else was much narrower, Karp said. “Maybe the person at the bottom has doubled their salary and the person at the top is five times richer, but 40 years ago it was very unusual to become a millionaire.”
“There could be a revolution and I could be 20 times richer than I am now,” he added.
He said AI is creating a “total disconnect” between normal economic benefits and a small number of people gaining “unimaginable wealth”.
“They say your life is going to suck.”
Karp said that even if AI doesn’t cause large-scale job losses, that doesn’t stop people from worrying about it, as some people behind the technology argue that such layoffs are inevitable.
“The leaders who run research companies, the leaders, said it’s true,” Karp said. “They say your life is going to suck. And they’re getting very rich, but you don’t like them very much.”
Although he did not name the executives, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have warned that AI will cause job destruction. Recently, they have softened their position.
Karp’s comments come as concerns surrounding AI are boiling over and sparking a public backlash. While Gen Z has expressed resentment toward the technology, the data center boom has also faced hostility from local communities and politicians.
This is also not the first time Karp has spoken out critically about the AI industry. He took a dig at the big labs in an interview with CNBC earlier this month, saying “something is completely wrong” in the AI market.
Karp told Dopfner that he believes AI will improve the lives of many people, but is skeptical of the idea that AI is a “lot of good” from which everyone can benefit.
“The overselling of AI in this country is really, really, really a little disconcerting, but it’s also depressing because it doesn’t have to be,” Karp said, describing AI as a “natural resource” with both positive and negative potential.
He also had some choice words about those leading the AI race.
“These are like very oddly shaped IQ specimens that you probably wouldn’t want to eat for dinner.”,” he said. “And if they come over for dinner, you have nothing to talk to them about. And vice versa, by the way.”