Palantir Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Alex Karp said he believes that when the world hits peak artificial intelligence, there will be so many jobs on offer that mass immigration will be obsolete.
“There will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training,” Karp (pictured) said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I do think these trends really do make it hard to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized skill.”
Karp, who Forbes says has a net worth of around $14.3 billion, used himself as an example of job displacement when he talked about his Ph.D. in philosophy. “Elite” white-collar workers like him, he said, will be the first to be affected by the great job disruption. Vocational workers, he believes, will hold on for longer.
His 30-minute conversation with BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Larry Fink has already drawn criticism from the media, which was quick to point out that these titans of the military-industrial complex and surveillance industry may not have their feet firmly on the ground.
Karp often has called himself as a “card-carrying progressive,” and not too long ago said his company’s surveillance technology would not be used to track immigrants in the U.S., according to a recent article in The Washington Post. Nonetheless, Palantir’s software has played a major role in helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement unearth undocumented immigrants and deport them in line with the current administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Karp was once a critic of mass deportations, but he has more recently aligned himself with President Trump, describing his company’s technology as “anti-woke” and praising the immigration crackdowns. If his predictions hold, it won’t be long until crackdowns on undocumented workers become a thing of the past, along with liberal arts degrees, because, according to Karp, AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”
Some executives attending the conference told Business Insider that they believe critical thinking skills will actually become a much sought-after commodity. Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Dario Amodei said the technicians that Karp values so highly are not in demand at his company, as software and coding roles decline.
Photo: YouTube
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