Why OpenAI’s Latest Policy Document and Palantir’s Manifesto Are a Cause for Worry

In two previous articles for The Wire, we have attempted to articulate the dangers of the theoretical paradigm Sam Altman advocates, namely, the change of the social contract in the age of AI and the danger of AI colonialism. Our attempt is to reach a wider audience to explain the dystopian nature of such attempts from AI “techbros” that may undo our freedoms, usher in tech colonialism and militarism enabled by white supremacy. 

The march towards this dystopian world has begun and a recent Open AI policy document and the ‘Palantir Manifesto’ – a 22-point list posted by Palantir CEO Alex Karp – have caused grave worry to those who denounce supremacist claims.

Let us unpack the OpenAI policy document and the Palantir manifesto to examine how these documents lay the epistemic groundwork for a new form of colonialism and racial supremacy.

'Policy for the Intelligence Age’

Altman has consistently maintained that the widespread impacts of advanced AI would require ‘some changes to the social contract’. Previously, we have emphasised that any such attempts by Big Tech to script social contracts must be interrogated from the vantage point of the marginalised to prevent exclusion and subjugation. 

OpenAI, has released a policy document that, according to them, marks one of the first steps in exploring how society must navigate the AI transition. The document is an interesting exercise in performative political correctness as it talks about the democratisation of access to AI, shared prosperity, risk mitigation, worker rights and modernised tax systems. On the surface, it appears to be a good starting point for AI policy discourse. 

However, as with all announcements from Big Tech companies, the document must also be interrogated carefully. This document comes at a crucial time for OpenAI, which is trying to balance securing funding, staying ahead in the AI race, and maintaining its image as a responsible AI company after several controversies. 

In that context, the document has been criticised for being nothing more than a ‘policymercial’ – a PR exercise that obscures the company’s ever-growing appetite for profit and investment behind a smokescreen of commitment to public interest. 

Further, several critical issues relevant to the current AI discourse find no mention in the document. 

These include: (i) the use of AI models in military contexts, (ii) widely documented cognitive impacts on users, (iii) AI in the Global South’s context – adverse impacts on poorer communities from data centers and psychological impacts on data workers cleaning training data, (iv) the position of copyright holders and creators whose work constitutes training data. 

For millions of people around the world, these issues constitute a significant part of their relationship with AI. The document also skips mention of bias, discrimination, fairness or algorithmic harm. Instead, it largely focuses on hypotheticals while strategically remaining silent on current issues. The framing of the selected issues already assumes that OpenAI has built the critical AI infrastructure on which society depends. Further, despite the policy suggestions, OpenAI has a history of lobbying against stricter AI regulation, including the EU’s AI Act and California’s SB 1047. 

The relative silence on military deployment is significant due to OpenAI’s recent controversial deal with the American defense establishment, along with its collaboration with Palantir, a data analytics company providing services to agencies, governments and companies across the world. Palantir, which also provides services to the American military establishment, has been subject to criticism for having enabled surveillance, deportations and its failures to respect human rights. 

Palantir manifesto

Jamaican philosopher Charles Mill wrote, in his book, The Racial Contract, “The embarrassing fact for the white West (which doubtless explains its concealment) is that their most important moral theorist of the past 300 years is also the foundational theorist in the modern period of the division between Herrenvolk and Untermenschen, persons and subpersons, upon which Nazi theory would later draw. Modern moral theory and modern racial theory have the same father.”

Palantir has recently come out with its own manifesto, posted on X recently, that lays bare the kind of ideological imperatives that inform the working of most American tech companies today. The manifesto is an excerpt from a book, The Technological Republic, written by Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, and head of corporate affairs, Nicholas Zamiska.

The manifesto refers to ‘moral debt’ and ‘affirmative obligation’ to defend a country that made its rise possible. It advocates for ‘hard power’ because the ‘moral appeal’ of ‘free and democratic societies’ is not enough. 

The US is projected as a power that has ‘made possible an extraordinary long peace.’ It goes on to advocate the undoing of the neutering of Germany and Japan. It has beef with those who snicker at Musk’s ‘grand narratives.’

However, the most crucial passage for the scholars of the Global South was point 21 of the manifesto.  It states: “Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.” 

This is a clear language of recolonisation in which certain cultures are stigmatized as middling, regressive, and harmful and bring back the colonial distinction of Herrenvolk and Untermenschen. The manifesto aims to create conditions for toxic grand narratives of tech czars such as Musk, while subjugating the petit recit of struggles against such dystopian dreams. 

Notably, co-founder of Palantir Peter Thiel has in the past expressed his desire to “unilaterally change the world without constantly having to convince people and beg people… through a technological means”, positing technology as an alternative to the democratic system.

Projecting the US as a moral power is nothing but a trite assertion of US exceptionalism. Along with technofascism, as many commentators have suggested, the manifesto's naked use of colonizing language is cause for great worry. These policies and manifestoes must be carefully read and critiqued in universities imparting technological, legal and sociological knowledge in the Global South. More importantly, the dangers of such AI-driven totalitarian visions must be told to the general public, and public intellectuals must play their part in amplifying these concerns. 

Vijay Kishor Tiwari is an Assistant Professor (Law) at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and the Director of Justice Radha Binod Pal Center for Critical Legal Studies.

Kaif Siddiqui is a Research Fellow and Doctoral Scholar at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad

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