Pictured: Illustration of Coventry as a libertarian seastead – supposedly part of the city council’s deal with Palantir Technologies
The news that Coventry city council in the UK has signed a £500,000-a-year artificial intelligence contract with the US data tech company Palantir has baffled fearful independent experts. However, I’ve thought about this issue deeply for five minutes and I’m here to explain what’s really going on.
It’s being reported that Coventry city council will be using using Palantir AI for “case-note transcription and to summarise social workers’ records.” The council is also “planning to extend the Palantir system to processes for providing support to children with special educational needs”.
The council’s chief executive, Julie Nugent, sounds excited by the partnership, saying Palantir will help the council “improve internal data integration and service delivery” and “explore the transformative opportunities of artificial intelligence”.
Critics have raised questions about the ethics of the deal. In a letter to Nugent, Nicky Downes, from the National Education Union, pointed out that Palantir are heavily involved in AI for surveillance, weapons systems, and predictive policing systems.
So. Why would Coventry city council give money to Palantir, whose Board Chairman is Peter Thiel – a man that many have argued is a deeply weird fascist? Have they not seen the video in which Thiel hesitates to confirm that he wants the human race to endure?
Why Coventry council is using Palantir AI
Surely the only explanation is: Coventry city council officials have seen the video. I think, unlikely as it sounds, Coventry council officials have watched it many times, liked it, and are now all-in on TESCREAL*; Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, (modern) Cosmism, Rationalist ideology, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism.
Nugent, like Thiel, must be a raging transhumanist. In fact, they’re all big believers in Rosco’s Obelisk**.
City council officials have run the numbers around the rise of AI and have made a considered calculation. By agreeing to submit to Theil now, Palantir have promised the officials that there’s a slight chance they’ll be allowed to save the lives of 460 of the best and brightest Coventrians. When Theil’s Skynet lays waste to the UK, rendering it uninhabitable, the fortunate few could be placed on a mini Coventry-shaped libertarian seastead, adrift in the North Sea.
Of course, the seasteading opportunity is dependent on whether Elon Musk’s ketamine spirit guides like the look of the candidates’ auras. But Nugent is hopeful. Really hopeful. It’ll be like a rapture. But in Coventry.
Pictured: Illustration of Coventry as a libertarian seastead – officials are hopeful that the second stage of the deal will include a trip to Mars via the rapture
Appendix
* “TESCREAL!” you cry. “It’s not TESCREAL. Coventry city council don’t know nuffink about TESCREAL. It’s just that they have not done their due diligence before allowing a suspect foreign tech firm and their mad anti-democratic, anti-human beliefs to interfere with the lives of their citizens.” But la la la my fingers are in my ears and I can’t hear you.
Elsewhere
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