Al Vigier: Canada's AI strategy shouldn't include secret Palantir bills

Palantir is giving me "Samaritan" vibes from the show: "Person of Interest".

For the ones who haven't watched this amazing show, here is a small Google AI summary:

Samaritan is the primary antagonist of the later seasons of the sci-fi series Person of Interest. It is a fictional, totalitarian artificial superintelligence created by Arthur Claypool. Unlike its counterpart, the Machine, Samaritan has no moral constraints, viewing human free will as a flaw requiring aggressive control and mass surveillance

I don’t know the specifics of this case, but in Canada, calls like this (all wrapped up in the flag), usually come from Canadian companies hoping for some sort of sole sourced contract that they have no business getting.

So so perhaps we should be excluding American companies at this time, but in the name of competition and openness, we should allow bids from our real allies, such as the Europeans or the Asians.

Canada shouldn't include Palantir at all.

Instead, buy domestic product, and out in the open.

What a title. I misread and thought an "AI Vigier" was an official tasked with being vigilant about AI.

I don't think there's a government in the world, including the US, that should allow Palantir anywhere near their data or systems. I consider Palantir a national security threat. I also feel this way about McKinsey (and Bain, BCG, etc).

I also think any form of platform AI usage to be a national security threat in the absence of stringent controls over that data and the platform. At some point I think governments and companies will wake up to this and demand local LLMs or, in the very least, a cloud platform within their jurisdiction, ownership and control.

The 1980s and 1990s ushered in this idea of "small government", privatization and public-private partnerships that I think was a huge mistake with catastrophic consequences. It's simply letting the foxes into the hen house. It leads to regulatory capture, a revolving door and a massive government-to-private wealth transfer.

What's funny is that a lot of this stems from a now throughly debunked idea of the "tragedy of the commons" [1].

[1]: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/03...

I mean no public strategy should include secret bills, Palantir or no Palantir.

If you're idealogically opposed to Palantir, how will a home-grown Palantir help? It would likely do the same things Palantir does but with a Canadian Alex Karp

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The sovereign initiative in Canada is laughable, most if not all critical infrastructure are 100% relying on US cloud products, from the usuals like MS and google all the way to cybersecurity and other products, and we are not even talking about supply chains and the likes. So practically speaking, the US can in a click, turn off Canada’s grid and banking, in minutes without a single bullet, the country will collapse. That’s why whenever I see all that buzz words of “sovereign xyz” I know it’s a just a way to funnel tax money back to some companies or programs, without having so much questions about it.

Canada and Europe call for banning American companies in their the name of sovereignty: upvoted and praised as necessary

America tries that for valid reasons (unfair subsidies, human or labor rights violations, BYD): get called fascist or stupid

Canada and domestic product simply not possible The only two countries who can run domestic products of this kind are USA and China . The rest is just gimmick or a lie.