The co-founder and chief of the data analysis company Palantir, Alexander Karp, has defended the work of the Start-ups with security agencies.
In an Interview with the podcast “inside.pod” of the Axel Springer media group referred to Karp, among other things, to the fact that the Hessian police have foiled according to its own information with the help of the Software of the company of a terrorist attack.
“do I know of a prevented terrorist attack in Europe approximately Once per week,” said Karp, more in the on Wednesday published an interview with Springer-CEO Mathias Döpfner. “I think that if these attacks were happening, you would have a very different political reality.” Palantir could not talk about such cases but.
The case in Hesse, was known in the summer, shortly before the contract for Palantir was the topic for a Committee of inquiry of the state Parliament. He went for months of the issue of whether the award of the contract was lawful. Hesse had bought as the first state of Software from Palantir.
Palantir is considered one of the highest rated, but also particularly secretive Start-ups. The Software of the company, which may associate various types of data with each other, with U.S. intelligence services such as CIA and NSA, as well as the Federal police FBI. On the question of whether Palantir had in fact also helped Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden track, said Karp, he is not allowed to comment on that.
The Palantir-in-chief showed at the same time, in principle, sympathetic to those, where the use of data analysis to do. “I understand why people are afraid of misuse of Software by governments and businesses – and there are legitimate Fears.” Palantir make sure to the privacy. Furthermore, the Start-up is not just about business: “of Course we are paid – and paid well. But our primary objective is a stronger the West is.”
Karp, who had studied his philosophy of time in Frankfurt with Jürgen Habermas, stressed that Europe should not give up in the contest with the United States and China in the development of artificial intelligence, his values. “No one I know in Europe, wants to live in a world without privacy.” The currency in the West and in Europe in particular, must be: “A Maximum of privacy and we still win.” The West must develop in the field of defence technologies, which are efficient, but civil liberties protected. Germany should play a leadership role in technology.
Karp, who is sitting in the Springer-Supervisory Board, went at a distance to companies like Facebook. “The consumer-oriented Internet companies have not explained how you help the society,” while you were at the same time, demographic bubbles in which to do people, only with those like themselves, who think the same.
The 51-year-old Karp has led a part of the conversation in German, and said, among other things, if Palantir would not have been successful, he would live now in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg. He had felt always very well, also as a “poor Student”.
Palantir is currently traded as one of the hot stock market of candidates. The “Wall Street Journal” reported in October, the Start-up could seek a valuation of 40 billion dollars – the plans are still in flux. At the time, it was said, also citing informed persons, Palantir expected for 2018 sales of $ 750 million to $ 600 million a year earlier. Karp should be with an IPO in any case, is officially a billionaire.
dpa
