Alex Karp: AI Models Are Stealing Your Data & The AI Safety Truth | CNBC Full Interview

Delighted to be here. You know, I've been here many times with you and you guys are tough, but among my favorites.

Well, okay, Palantir, we've been in the forefront of using AI in the military context, the first company to build actually a functional AI technology as is currently well known. We're dominating the application space. We have a product. So, there's a lot of we have a lot of experience with like what works, what doesn't. There are really different kinds of safety issues quite frankly. Almost all my we dominate US commercial as a company and the clients our partners are livid at the kind of safety they're most upset about what they believe is the theft of their alpha meaning their ideas of how to run a business their data in landing in a model and they find out that the competitor next door has all of their alpha meaning how they do their business and they paid for it. I mean I can't repeat what the customers are saying but they're basically like one to give you the one that was the least vulgar. It's like but but how can they tell me not to wear a condom? Like this is and that's the least vulgar person that we deal with. They're like livid and so they're livid. So that's...

No, no. Open. The reason why the sovereignty revolution, which we helped launch together with our partner Jensen Huang, the famous founder and head of Nvidia, is the when you use a closed model and you pay for tokens, you're not the reason the tokens are discounted is not so they can grow the market. They're discounted so that they can get access to your IP so that their models get better. And there was functionally no honest conversation about this or disclosure. Now that's point one. Point two is without an application layer and without post training which is currently being done with open weight models you in the classify side and it's just taking off across America because it's cheaper and ends up being safer and you control your future and your present. You are de facto outsourcing the value of energy. By the way, it's very much linked to the safety concerns. Now, Dario is one of the most important entrepreneurs. I've been at this for a long time. I've never seen anyone come from the back. I have a lot of respect for him and I have a lot of respect for him because he's actually believes of course he's a business person too most sometimes. So, of course, when the company's not doing as well, these things come forward and they talk about safety and when it's doing better, they they I don't think that's actually what's driving this, but you know, I mean, it does happen regularly, but I think that, you know, in he's what makes him so strong is he's ethical and a business person. Okay. So, but but but what's actually happening is very different than what people are reporting. Everyone thinks this is a safety versus non-safety versus regulation. What what what he I believe has realized is it if you if you take the eth philosophical frame they have which is we are deserving of having all the IP in the world we the thousand people who think the way we do that's why you can't work with the military that's why you can take the IP from businesses and put it in your model that that model would require severe liability protection and there's only one institution that can do that the US government. And then that's before you get to the danger. So what was really happening is the investors loved when he was migrating all the value of everyone else's business to their business because they're investors. They don't realize it's like it's like every mark. They don't realize they're the mark because now you first you migrate all the IP to your business and then because you need uncapped you need capped liability both vis-a-vis the business and vis-a-vis the dangers you've got to migrate the business to the government. It has to be nationalized. So what's actually happening is this is reported as regulation non-regulation movement. That's actually not what this movement is. It's like the view that I believe they have is these businesses have to be nationalized because if you don't nationalize them, every single one of my clients is going to sue.

Well, obviously like if you have a business that presupposes unlimited risk, both vis-a-vis liability risk, vis-a-vis the clients, cuz I don't think any of our clients realized their IP was migrating. Vis-a-vis the world because you're saying what is the liability risk for destroying 10% of the company 10% of the world it discounted into the present okay but there's only one institution and by the way that's not actually what's happening they want three institutions it's going to be like Europe Canada and America we migrate all the IP of America from our businesses to this institution then the institution is going to get full liability protection because it's national.

No, very no. I think I think these are very different things but I think that is the core philosophy of the EA movement imposed upon a business.

Yeah. So that's actually what is driving this. Now of course the other model companies have very different I think most what what they want is and I think is well first we should self-regulate. If you do not self responsibly self-regulate. By the way though, the biggest danger currently of this revolution is that it generates inescapably I think it will raise the boats of most people, but you can't have a revolution where I become 50 times wealthier and everyone else becomes 10% wealthier. It's going to drive political insanity. Political insanity. What does that look like? It looks like obviously wealthy people should pay more than fair their share of the taxes, but a wealth tax kills entrepreneurship. It actually is in by the way it's massively beneficial to me.

So you have to find ways to actually tax at the high end that that aren't a wealth tax. There are ways to do this. I think the way you do it is you tie reduction of waste, fraud and abuse to increase taxes among the very wealthy. So but in any case you you have to you you the other political insanity and then realize the financial thing is look at the far right and far left in this country. This is directly tied to the fact that many people are like, 'Screw this. I don't want these people becoming a hundred times wealthier. I'm gonna blow up the whole system.' What does that blowing up the whole system looks like? It looks like DSA people who are very happy to talk about how they're not anti-Jewish. They love that. They don't like to talk about how they're not anti-black cuz that's something they hide. You have the far right. It's like everything is a data center run by somebody. It's like they attack us for running data. We don't even build data centers. We get attacked. So that is like and by the way the one of the biggest mistakes the labs have made is we are in competition with China. Some people think they're our enemy, some people think they're a competitor. Pick your spectrum. Either we are going to win and provide the stack to the world. And stack doesn't mean you have to take the whole part or they're going to win. And that means the the danger is not just the danger of dangerous things happening to humanity which by the way what business isn't responsible for minding your own safety? You can't go to a what you know another reason our customers are livid is like they build chemicals.

Of course it's a societal issue but you...

Well, you have to find a way to set reasonable guidelines that are enforced, but you can't do it. The first line of defense is you're liable for your own actions. So, it's it's a weird twist. They're asking for societal regulation to get out of the first line of defense, which is if you build a technology that can destroy 10% of the UN of of of the world. That is a that has civil and criminal liability attached to it. The first step is to say okay it is not the first step isn't to say we get out of it because we want to self-regulate or we want regulation. The first step is to say okay you've disclosed this what are you doing about it and the second step is to say if you're not doing it you're not being responsible we're going to have to get people involved. That's going to be also very complicated because regulating these things need people you need people who understand them. Another problem we have is seemingly everyone who understands this is on some payroll. So it's like you know it's like who are you going to trust? You know, when we built nuclear energy, we built the bomb. People did it because they believed. They were not on the payroll.

This is the thing. You're assuming that there will be an S1. Now, I don't Okay, maybe there will be. The only way to deal with this kind of liability is to go to the government and say, 'Nationalize us, please.' You know, a lot of times in business, people don't say what they want. They're leading you to the conclusion. The reason why people don't have not understood this is again every investor and there are a lot of people who think they're going to make money. They're like, 'Oh, the businesses are the mark.' What is the first lesson in poker and in life? If you you you think the other person's the mark, you're the mark. You are the mark. And it will be nationalized simply because of the liability issues they're talking about.

I I don't know what they're going to do and I think that's probably a barrier to entry but it it's like you could delay it. You have to you there's only one when you have unlimited liability the only way to deal with it would be to go to the government and say we'll give you 50% of our business of course the value of the business will collapse first when you do that collapse another time when you have people on the board collapse another time all of us it might even collapse the whole market but you that is the way you essentially but again you have to look at the philosophy of it again this is where the investors have just made such a big mistake with their greed like a little bit of greed is great but like it's like no they didn't mind when when the when the IP is being migrated from every business to a entity they own. But the next step is obviously to take that value and migrate it to the government. But that would never happen to me. And like and again this is where I have tremendous respect for people like that because he's thinking ethically according to his ethical frame. He's not thinking primarily financially. This is what's made him such a great business leader. This is the reason why the best engineers researchers want to work for him. It's the reason why he came from fifth behind to number one. This is a very very smart shrewd ethical person. The ethical frame is different than the frame most of us have which is we need to share wealth. We need to expand the wealth. We need to divers put more diversity in terms of who owns and who regulates and who controls. And if it started in America, it could have only been built in America. Only America would allow you to buy it. only America provided the regulatory frame when this could have happened. America should be the final arbiter of it in the military and in regulation and that's exactly what they do not want.

I'm I'm what I'm saying is if I let's just take nuclear energy there. It's very like for example, one of the reasons France is still much stronger than you'd expect is they move to nuclear. If you look interestingly if you look at energy expenditure per unit per person as a function of GDP it's America, China Israel and then Switzerland roughly France. Okay. So this is very this is technology that is sharp. It's used in medicine. It's used in nuclear. It powers our deterrence above the air, below the air, in the ocean. Okay. it it can also be abused and there are also accidents. The first step you cannot say I'm building something but I have no idea how to bound it. And I don't believe that's what but again that's I don't believe that's what they're saying.

No no no that's what they're saying but that's not what they mean. Right. What they mean is the obvious solution is America America gives a risk essentially limits the risk in return for owning it or a national or multinational government does. That's what they're actually mean. That's not what they're saying because you couldn't come out to say it because somebody has It's like two It's like the investors are going to be, 'What the f? I thought someone else was the mark,'

I'm counting my huge pile of tendies.

Well, it Yeah. I mean, you know, people don't like finding out they're the mark. But again, the way you the way you can avoid being in a market in life is to assume when someone is pointing out someone else is the sucker, you're the sucker.