How Palantir Is Using AI in Ukraine
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Defense contractors and governments can run a thousand simulations, but the data they get will never be as good as what’s generated on a battlefield. When Russia invaded Ukraine, tech companies saw an opportunity. A land war in Europe presented a unique chance to test cutting-edge technologies. That’s why, a few months after the 2022 invasion, Palantir CEO Alex Karp drove into the capital to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
TIME Senior Correspondent Vera Bergengruen is here on Angry Planet to tell the story. She traveled to Ukraine herself to see how tech companies have turned the country into a test bed for AI and other advanced technologies. As the war grinds on, Kyiv is singing the praises of the companies that help keep it safe. But wars aren’t forever and what becomes of some of the more invasive technology like facial recognition when the fighting stops?
How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab
A Palantir-published tech demo
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature |
| 0:05.1 | It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. I do think there's a good discussion to be had on what's real and what's hype, right? |
| 0:22.0 | Oh, absolutely. I think that's a good place to start. |
| 0:24.0 | But first, will you introduce yourself |
| 0:26.0 | and who you work for and what you're doing here? |
| 0:29.0 | Yeah, so my name is Vera Bergengruin, |
| 0:32.0 | I'm a senior correspondent for Time magazine and I just got back from Ukraine a couple of months ago on a trip where I reported on how different tech companies, especially Western tech companies, |
| 0:42.8 | are using the war and the battlefields there |
| 0:45.5 | as a kind of big test ground for new tech. |
| 0:49.0 | And one of the companies that's at the center of the story |
| 0:51.2 | is Palantir. |
| 0:57.3 | And for people that are listening that may not know or maybe only know the Tolkien reference, |
| 1:00.3 | what is Palantir and how important is it? |
| 1:05.4 | Yeah, so Palantir is a very interesting company. It's kind of got this ether this myth around it at this point because it was founded you know with some CIA backed seed money it was founded to |
| 1:12.1 | basically it's you know it's a data analytics company. |
| 1:15.0 | A lot of initial contracts were for Western governments, for Intel agencies, for defense agencies, and so that's where a lot of its early work took place and |
| 1:26.4 | because of that a lot of it was classified a lot of kind of happened in the |
| 1:30.5 | shadows whether intentionally or not. |
| 1:32.6 | So it's always been shrouded, this company has always been shrouded |
| 1:35.8 | in this kind of aura of mystery, |
| 1:38.4 | which they kind of embrace. |
| 1:39.9 | It seems they really like that. |
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