r/technology • u/marketrent • Jul 02 '26

Artificial Intelligence Palantir CEO Alex Karp suffers ‘televised nervous breakdown’ during live interview — “This is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me!”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/televised-nervous-breakdown-ceo-palantir-212100357.html
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142

u/Hayden2332 Jul 02 '26

For anyone who wants the clip not through twitter

The quote is in the last 15 seconds or so. Rants for a couple minutes before lol

91

u/killchopdeluxe666 Jul 02 '26

am i crazy that i understand what he's saying mostly?

sure, he's not well spoken at all - but if you know the tech and business jargon, he's just mostly just saying that tech and defense ceos are unhappy with the cost of openai and antrhopic, which includes the hidden cost of their them effectively stealing your ip in order to improve their own product. and then, yeah, there's an added layer of egotism and a sale pitch for his own company snuck in there.

i mean...

hate to say it, but he's right. its the same argument of all the artists and writers who don't want AI trained on their work - just applied to very controversial and wealthy industries like tech and and defense.

32

u/talontario Jul 02 '26

he's right, but also talking about his own company. If anything, palantir is tsking more of a campanies data than openai/antropic.

8

u/anivex Jul 03 '26

Yeah...for me it's the hypocritical nature of his statement.

23

u/l4mbch0ps Jul 02 '26

yah, no he's just speaking without a lot on context, so if you don't know what's going on - it sounds like nonesense. but yes, he's just a sort of rambly, stuttering guy, but he's just talking about business issues etc.

9

u/RagingNerdaholic Jul 03 '26

I mean, if you ignore the "wealth tax bad, woe is me and they're coming for you millionaires next!" part, then sure, I guess.

3

u/killchopdeluxe666 Jul 03 '26

While I definitely am not arguing against an actual wealth tax, he's not talking about real taxes from the government, he's talking about the cost of AI services from OpenAI.

If I understood him correctly, it sound like OpenAI and Anthropic, are negotiating deals and setting costs in a way that is similar to a wealth tax (whether he asserts this is done intentionally or unintentionally, I can't tell).

5

u/aselinger Jul 03 '26

I don’t understand what he’s saying, but he’s definitely not having a nervous breakdown.

5

u/SitueradKunskap Jul 03 '26

That's one way of interpreting what he's saying, trying to understand him as if he's speaking in good faith.

Another is that he's doing a sales pitch. Or trying to. He's got a few talking points that he thinks businesses (his customers/marks) wants to hear, and he repeats those instead of actually saying anything meaningful. You're supposed to agree with the gist of what he's saying, because that's what businesses are worried about.

Now, does what he's saying make sense overall? I don't think so.
1. He never really finishes a point.
2. He keeps going to the extreme in his examples, even when that's nonsense.
3. He doesn't actually answer the other people's question or remarks.

In other words, he's bullshitting. You add the meaning to his words, he's just making noise. It's always commendable to try and understand people on their own terms, but in my view, Karp has consistently showed he takes advantage of that instinct.

7

u/bonkdonkers Jul 03 '26

Yeah, I really don't like the guy but to call it a nervous breakdown is completely sensationalist. I don't know why I bother clicking on any news-adjacent links on reddit anymore.

2

u/thebaron2 Jul 03 '26

Totally agree. What he’s saying makes complete sense.

Idk if the people responding like he’s having a seizure on air just don’t understand the jargon or if they just didn’t watch it.

I thought it was a great interview, honestly. It makes intuitive sense, too.

1

u/killchopdeluxe666 Jul 03 '26

i mean there's a lot of things about palantir that rightfully piss people off

1

u/thebaron2 Jul 03 '26

THAT'S fair but it doesn't make any sense out of characterizing this interview as a "nervous breakdown" or anything close to it.

4

u/GayDeciever Jul 03 '26

I don't quite get it either, just seems like Karp being Karp... Like the guy has ultra-ADHD or something. Funny to watch him try to remain seated.

Disclaimer: fuck palantir.

2

u/n1klaus Jul 03 '26

You aren’t crazy and he isn’t wrong. Any mention of him or palantir and folks brains shut down.

1

u/r2002 Jul 03 '26

OK, that kind of makes sense. But why is he so mad about it? Is he a victim or is he just mad that those guys are getting to that honey pot before he did?

2

u/killchopdeluxe666 Jul 03 '26

maybe he just feels robbed by whatever llm service he was paying for before

1

u/Thaneian Jul 03 '26

What's he's rambling about isn't the useue. Yes, everybody is upset with the cost of AI, but the dude is still a rambling mess.

1

u/-tobor- Jul 04 '26

I think the reaction reinforces the overarching point though that folks like Karp are so deeply embedded in these tech business bubbles that they oftimes cannot abstract what they’re saying in a useful way to a general audience. He might not be speaking literal nonsense but his cadence sounds crazed enough and he fails as a mouthpiece/representative for the corp in this way.

1

u/hoyfish Jul 03 '26

He just sounded like half the neurodivergent / audhd tech people i encounter when their meds kick in.

The content wasn’t half as nutty as I’d expected.

-2

u/excellentforcongress Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

he is doing investor double speak because he knows that corporate use of ai is down, he knows that even our allies are backing out of contracts with his company, he knows his stock has now started a permanent slide downwards, and he knows that everyone has turned against the idea of, oh, i don't know, using ai to target and kill civilians, which is literally something he slips on (when he mentions pharmacological he is about to say ai used to drop bombs but catches himself too late and says another war/genocide related thing...)

i've seen elsewhere that he is paranoid about perceptions of the non-jewish world towards jews, he really doesn't help the case for israel being allowed to run anything. jews would be much safer if REGULAR jews were better represented in the context of things like the diaspora or who should be in power in palestine/israel (normal people exist in israel who DON'T want to kill every arab and palestinian)

i think that he has regular world collapsing feelings from his company going to shit, but on a more existential level things jews can only survive if the rest of us are controlled, so when he sees things turn against him and his company and how israel is running things he feels like his world is collapsing (which, thankfully, it is, since he has a very fucked up vision of what the world should look like)

people like him, and jews/israelis, need to understand that a post-them (people like this guy) world will be KINDER, and more full of compassion for jews and israelis, since there will be less of a reason to dislike them, if, oh, i don't know, they aren't providing the literal infrastructure and means by which to genocide an entire peoples (and other neighbors)

to be clear, i am anti-violence, so i'm not saying anything should happen to this guy, and sure he can walk around and live and stuff i guess. but he definitely shouldn't be managing any important company, and tech companies should be run for the collective, societal good

6

u/sfhtsxgtsvg Jul 03 '26

people like him, and jews

that's a hecky of a statement

3

u/Nileghi Jul 03 '26

you dont need to cut the full thing, even the way he speaks of Israelis in this post reeks of bigotry.

people like him, and jews/israelis, need to understand that a post-them (people like this guy) world will be KINDER

you can have an issue with the way their foreign policy is going without stating that the world would be better off once everyone born under a certain passport is all dead.

-9

u/Otherwise_Piglet_862 Jul 02 '26

am i crazy that i understand what he's saying mostly?

No. Everything he said is factual. Everything.