Palantir CEO says AI companies 'don't understand how unlikeable they are'

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp said that AI companies and their leaders don't know how unlikeable they are. "I told them this," he said.
• "Most of them are chillaxing over their latte, reading a report about something that they don't understand," he said on CNBC.
• Karp also bashed OpenAI's new deployment company, calling it a "complete farce."

Alex Karp thinks Silicon Valley's AI companies and their leaders are lacking one key trait: self-awareness.

The CEO of Palantir has an interesting position in the AI boom. Labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are both partners and competitors. In an interview with CNBC, Karp took some jabs at the those companies and their San Francisco-based work culture.

"They don't understand how unlikeable they are," Karp said. "I told them this. I probably shouldn't have."

The AI-pilled are also too future-forward, said Karp, who has criticized the San Francisco tech scene before. The AI labs believe that they "don't have to solve your problem today," because it will be solved tomorrow, he said. "It's largely religious."

Karp also criticized the AI companies' products. He said that they "don't actually work the way" customers expect, and that they're "very expensive."

Sentiment about AI might differ outside San Francisco, he added.

Several tech companies have been embracing the forward-deployed model for AI, including OpenAI and Google. That's a model that Palantir popularized — and Karp said the AI giants have so far done a bad job of it.

"Most of them are chillaxing over their latte, reading a report about something that they don't understand the technical capacity about," he said.

Karp specifically called out the OpenAI Deployment Company, calling it a "complete farce" and an attempt to "replicate Palantir." OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

'We need heaven on earth'

Karp's comments follow growing backlash from some against AI and its figureheads. Tech leaders' AI comments have been booed during commencement speeches, something that Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a Wednesday blog post should serve as "a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector."

While Karp said the AI leaders don't realize that they are unlikable, he clarified that doesn't mean he personally feels that way. He shouted out Sam Altman and Dario Amodei as providing "some of the best and most interesting conversations I've had in business."

He narrowed in on Anthropic's Amodei. "He's a very, very important person," Karp said, and "he believes what he's saying."

That doesn't mean they don't still butt heads.

"I believe that we need heaven on earth, not heaven in 20 years," he said. "We disagree on these things."

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