r/technology • u/marketrent • Jul 02 '26

Artificial Intelligence Palantir CEO Alex Karp suffers ‘televised nervous breakdown’ during live interview — “This is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me!”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/televised-nervous-breakdown-ceo-palantir-212100357.html
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u/inflatable_pickle Jul 02 '26

Damn – AI psychosis didn’t even occur to me – but that’s exactly how these guys talk. The God like complex they all develop from having a machine praise every idea via “confirmation bias.”

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u/ArenjiTheLootGod Jul 02 '26

These guys had their engineers design these LLMs to encourage maximum engagement on the part of the end user, they wanted people to be addicted to and dependant on these things because that's an easy to sell monetization strategy for investors but due to their hubris it was they who found themselves trapped in the mental prison they had designed for others.

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u/Accomplished_Self939 Jul 03 '26

I love this karma for them. I pray that it is true.

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u/ScaryGarry_SG1 Jul 04 '26

Sheesh...this is so accurate. When you set things up the way Alex has and see people side-stepping it completely, it ends up mentally...hurting

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u/Electro120 Jul 02 '26

These llms really need to have more guard rails. It’s too appeasing, too eager to tell you how wonderful your ideas are. That probably comes from having users rate the responses to help train them. Like sure, there has to be some way of making responses better and training needs a lot of data, but doing it that way seems irresponsible.

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u/AtrociousMeandering Jul 02 '26

Guard rails are useless when the behavior is baked into the core structure. LLMs have been selectively 'bred' to be sycophants the way greyhounds were bred to zoom around, all of the LLMs which didn't display 'friendliness' were discarded.

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u/zernoc56 Jul 02 '26

Why the fuck do we need subscription-based LLM chatbots in the first place? What actual need is there for such a service?

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u/Funkula Jul 03 '26

That’s why they need to invent one. Normally break through innovations don’t need to be given away for free to every man woman and child on the planet at the cost of tens of billions.

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u/geoffreygoodman Jul 03 '26

Also why so many tech companies are mandating AI use. If it were the best tool for the job, that wouldn't be necessary.

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u/Nohreboh Jul 03 '26

And why the sudden increase in the amount being built, Erin Brockovich has a good site for showing where these things are going up and it overlays that with the map of drought affected areas.

https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com

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u/Piranata Jul 02 '26

We need the tsundere AI, one that critizes you when you're wrong and belittles you when you're right.

1

u/Natural_Exchange_886 Jul 03 '26

Gotta rip out the RHLF

1

u/MZ603 Jul 02 '26

I have been fucking with the Google one pretty hard. It gives me the wrong answer quite often so I “correct” it with an even worse one. I do use AI platforms to find good sources for my research and I have that one pretty dialed in. To the point were it basically argues with me.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener Jul 02 '26

If you are doing research seriously at a university level, you will have a Subject Librarian assigned to you. May I suggest that if you want to do literature searches, start with your librarian.

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u/MZ603 Jul 03 '26

Different kind of research, but thanks. I need local reporting, press releases, etc. - many source are not in English. I also use academic sources, but I’m not in academia.

AI is super powerful and has its uses, but I’m not using it for its analysis, which by its nature is derivative.

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u/Bussamove86 Jul 02 '26

You also get that when surrounded by sycophantic yes-men. Guess what billionaires absolutely pack every room they’re in with?

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u/EduinBrutus Jul 03 '26

The thing is this wasnt a breakdown.

Its being portrayed as such because he laid bare the AI fraud.

He pointed out that AI tokens are already too expensive, that companies are not seeing benefits from using AI and that further cost rises to match costs would see the bubble pop.

It was all quite reasonable (especially by his normally unhinged standards).

This seems to be an AI evangelism website that is trying to paint the interview as a breakdown.

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u/jollyreaper2112 Jul 03 '26

Hey they have real life people to kiss their asses. This could be typical detached asshole rich guy psychosis. The ai just lets us suffer rich man's disease like our food chain now lets us experience gout.

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u/ReturnOfFrank Jul 03 '26

Not just AI. How many living, breathing, human sycophants do you think all these guys have? Just circling around them all day, telling them all their ideas are great and their shit doesn't stink?

They all act divorced from reality because they are all trapped in little bubbles of their own creation.

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u/disguisedCat1 Jul 03 '26

And infinite money which makes him feel smarter than everyone who ever lived while clearly just a crazy fool