Alex Karp, the CEO of controversial tech company Palantir, raised eyebrows during a recent live interview with the New York Times. In a viral video of the discussion, Karp defended his company to the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, gesturing dramatically with his arms, bouncing up and down on his chair, and struggling to make his point.
Palantir’s X account shared the video on Sunday morning and announced Karp is launching The Neurodivergent Fellowship: “If you find yourself relating to [Karp] in this video — unable to sit still, or thinking faster than you can speak — we encourage you to apply.”
Palantir announced Karp himself would conduct final interviews for the fellowship. In a reply to the first message on X, the company included an application link to the fellowship, which is available in Palantir’s New York City and Washington, D.C. offices.
“The current LLM tech landscape positions [neurodivergent people] to dominate,” according to the application. “Pattern recognition. Non-linear thinking. Hyperfocus. The cognitive traits that make the neurodivergent different are precisely what make them exceptional in an AI-driven world.”
Palantir, a data and analytics company co-founded by conservative “kingmaker” Peter Thiel, was quick to argue that the fellowship is not a DEI initiative.
“Palantir is launching the Neurodivergent Fellowship as a recruitment pathway for exceptional neurodivergent talent,” according to the application, “This is not a diversity initiative. We believe neurodivergent individuals will have a competitive advantage as elite builders of the next technological era, and we’re hiring accordingly for all roles.”
“I’m not a POS, I’m neurodivergent…”
Riiiiiiiiight… 🤔
Not mutually exclusive.
Edit: I say this as someone who’s neurospicy.
So the dude was tweaking on whatever legalized version of cocaine is available this week and then passes it off as neurodivergent. This makes those of us that actually have issues look like hyperactive children. Also fuck Palantir. I’d rather drag my nuts through broken glass than ever be associated with their human rights violation machine. Fucking sickening.
Why the fuck are all the rich assholes tweaked out of their gourds? It speakes volumes that even those at the top of this bullshit society hate it and resort to drugs to cope.
For them it’s probably truly recreational and for fun as opposed to us slaves of society doing it just to fucking cope or blow off some steam.
That was my first thought, dude looked coked up…
The way I read this is that they’re trying to weaponize autism. They see people who are neurodivergent as a resource they can tap into.
Alex Karp’s behavior is much better explained by cocaine. He may be neurodivergent, but he was still high as giraffe pussy.
Woah! That’s pretty high!
He did a great job supressing the sniffles.
Hahahahahahahhahahahaah. Dude, I cannot stop laughing!
Don’t give giraffe pussy a bad name, bro.
No thanks I’m good on violating everyone’s 4th amendment rights and identifying targets for a genocide like an absolute criminal traitor asshole
I‘m sick and tired of rich schmucks selling their lack of empathy as being neurodivergent. Nah man, you don‘t struggle with social cues. You simply don‘t care about others. That‘s a huge difference.
Technically antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder are neurodivergent…
Those are personality disorders, not forms of neurodivergence.
I seem to recall hearing that there were genetic/epigenetic components that predispose some folks to those personality disorders. I’m not disagreeing with you and I don’t know if the research I saw was corroborated. I just think it’s an interesting idea that you’re not born with NPD, but you can be more vulnerable to developing it.
I think that what you are noting is that narcissism can be caused by differences in brain structure, like in psychopathy, or by differences in upbringing, like in sociopathy. In the first case, you’re born that way. In the second case, trauma and such made you that way.
He’s definitely neurodivergent and not drug addicted. Definitely.
He’s definitely sitting comfortably in the middle of that Venn
Edit: Lmfao the Palantir account actually started their tweet about this with “While cross-country skiing this morning”
Do they think we’re stupid?
Re edit: It’s a legitimate thing to do when you own so much money.
Cocaine or actual cross country skiing? I guess both work
“While cross-country skiing this morning”
While gliding in his k-hole this morning
They say it’s not a DEI initiative; they just want to get this talent onboard for their business.
Ironically, that’s exactly what DEI initiatives were all about: recognizing that if we let white bros excluded all others from the workplace, like they have in prior decades, we will shut out the majority of the world’s talent, and we should do whatever it takes to make sure everyone can join, work, and truly focus without watching their back all the time.
Or more cynically: privileged talent knows its worth, marginalized talent is undervalued and will thank you for only lightly screwing it
Exactly, not to mention the entire idea of a “tech” bro violated societies norms (it didn’t really they just wore hoodies). But the fact that you had “nerds” succeeding and winning at life seemed to contradict the Don Draper/Frat Bro prototype of success
That honestly started around 60s and by the time of tech bros even receded.
All the old Aspies are watching alone from the corner of the room saying to themselves, “wtf is wrong with this guy?”
Can’t wait until all these Tech wastes of human garbage finally reach critical mass, self consume, and crawl back under historical rocks.
For the record, using the real issue of nuerodivergence as an excuse for a lack of consciousness or mortality is new low.
Guaranteed Palantir isn’t accepting neurodivergence as an excuse for Jack shit from their non C-suite employees
“The current LLM tech landscape positions [neurodivergent people] to dominate,” according to the application. “Pattern recognition. Non-linear thinking. Hyperfocus. The cognitive traits that make the neurodivergent different are precisely what make them exceptional in an AI-driven world.”
What a load of bullshit, LLMs will be used in a million ways to sideline neurodivergent people in society whether it be BS AI “help” for a neurodivergent student replacing a human teacher or job applications using AI to illegally screen and filter out neurodivergent people, this is a bad decade for neurodivergent people and it is likely only to get worse as societies collapse into bigotry from the endless stresses and catastrophies of runaway climate change.
Right, there was legal pressure upon inputs of decision-making to make it more egalitarian or whatever. And by other criteria too.
So what happens is full obfuscation of inputs. In the form of LLMs.
Philosophically this is correct in my opinion, trees should be judged by their fruit.
A simplified comparison is British vs Prussian army philosophy, in Prussia, when evaluating officer’s performance, they’d judge his decision-making process and its inputs, even if the result was catastrophic, while in British army and navy they’d only judge the result, no matter how correct the decision-making. That has been often called unjust and not nuanced enough, but one way lost historically and the other won. For a reason. Judgement of inputs has more failure points. It causes degeneracy long-term.
A bit like every metric used as a KPI ceasing to be a useful metric, there’s such a commonly quoted MBA rule, except MBAs are not smart enough to remember that rule, generally.
The alternative to this is responsibility for all that happens downstream. No matter which inputs you get. In exchange for that you are allowed to have any decision-making process at all, just pay for it in full if something wrong happens.
We are being pressed by evolution (including technical progress) to adopt that approach, and it’s good, but it’ll take probably lots of wars and revolutions. People who hide malice behind formally correct inputs do resist. And they do hold power.
Instead of inputs you should treat any social mechanism as a black box, and both limit and judge its outputs. If they are outside limits, discard and punish. If they are inside limits, then evaluate and bill - in prison years or in fines or both. Or reward.
You never know all the inputs anyway and can’t tell if they are correct.
Wiping Palantir off the face of the earth would be a giant leap forward for humanity.
why stop there, let’s dismantle ALL big tech while we’re at it
Get the Flock out of here
Of course, when we can be utilized we’re fine.
Dont fucking drag us into your mud.
Ah yes, let’s start the slow process of eventually funneling people into roles based off this shit. AI is the future, and potentially our self-bootstrapped god. Neurodivergence makes you better at this sort of work. You’re one of the chosen people. High priest to Roko’s
BallsackBasilisk or some shit.I know that’s extreme to say, but Peter Thiel, the money behind Palantir, recently gave some absolutely insane speeches about the fucking antichrist. The AI race is legitimately a cult with religious meaning to some of these fucks.
Also, brace yourselves for attempts to use this as a shield against criticism. You can’t get mad at us for not understanding the concept of human dignity, we’ve got the billionaire international surveillance contractor stamp of the global elite approved neurodivergence!
To be clear, no hate meant towards the neurodivergent. I am one. All the hate to the fucking billionaires just transparently fucking over the world in every way they can.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
