Palantir Technologies is a privately owned artificial intelligence software company that has been used for surveillance by the federal government since March 2024. According to Brownstone Research, AI has now grown faster than Monroe’s law which is the “gold standard for exponential growth in the field of high technology.” This software is efficient, compiling the records of hundreds of citizens including social security, immigration status, and more. As AI advances, our governmental systems will become more technology driven.
However, according to the New York Times, many “student unions and labor rights organizations” have not protested specifically against the technology, but the possible agendas that could be pushed with the extensive data collection.
Privacy rights and data collection has always been a cat and mouse game for the government and the governed. For example, the 1500’s Social Contract was a moral and political agreement between the people and their government that citizens must sacrifice some freedoms for indefinite government protection. This theory remains influential in the modern world as people debate how much they’re willing to atone for in the name of “national security.”
Additionally, The Patriot Act of 2001 gives the federal government the right to record and keep information specifically by tracking phone calls without a warrant. As AI advances, that Act still remains in full governmental jurisdiction.
According to NPR, former Palantir workers have expressed that the original code of conduct for this high-grade AI software, which was to “protect the vulnerable” and “ensure the responsible development of artificial intelligence,” is no longer being upheld.
Palantir continues to offer its AI models to the U.S. Department of Defense under Trump’s administration. The social construct is an ongoing agreement that is continuously debated and revised in our modern world. As technological tools grow more systematic, we must understand what the new iPhone or updated AI model really means to our society. What are we willing to sacrifice and what do we deserve in return?
