Palantir plans to provide military and commercial customers with an AI platform

There are some interesting ideas being made by Palantir Technologies PLTR +1.67% Technology about how artificial intelligence might be made useful for military purposes, and it has some ideas about how this might be done.

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AIP, or the Artificial Intelligence Platform, is a data analytics software company that delivers systems for managing large datasets to both government and corporate customers. The company announced in an open letter Friday from its CEO Alex Karp that it will "shortly" release its new artificial intelligence platform, known as AIP. 

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Karp explained that the new software will use a combination of machine-learning technologies that OpenAI has previously developed with the kind of large language models used to drive OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google Bard, among others. It is expected that Palantir (ticker: PLTR) will target both commercial and government customers with this software.

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"Almost all large organizations in the world will soon be required to have systems that provide these capabilities as part of their business operations," Karp wrote. "Among the many commercial sectors we will be releasing our platform to our aviation, manufacturing, energy, banking, mining, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and government partners, including leading intelligence and defense agencies across the country and its allies in Europe and around the world, are a few of the sectors in which we will be releasing our platform."

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Karp said that the first version of AIP would be available to an initial set of partners in the coming weeks and no later than the end of May. 

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In a statement to the press, Palantir's chief said that the system was able to combine public and private data in a way that would make the latest large language models more than just curious objects of public interest.

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Several examples were given in the letter of how the system might be used in a military context to demonstrate its usefulness. 

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It has been suggested that an intelligence analyst working for an allied nation in Europe might ask a question such as, "Which of our special forces units is closest to the enemy tank positions and is equipped with enough Javelin missiles to mount a successful offensive? Are there any specific tanks on the battlefield that are most vulnerable to attack? ”

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In addition, he took the time to offer another example pertaining to drug development, in which he envisioned a scientist at a large pharmaceutical company asking a question such as "Which of our project's candidate drugs are likely to be the safest for human consumption? Are we able to scale up the production of these drugs in order to conduct a clinical trial on them? “And do we have the capability to do so? ”

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AI poses a danger to humanity as well, according to Karp.

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"Artificial intelligence carries significant risks to individual rights, as well as physical safety," he writes. "Rather than resulting from discrete relationships within a network of connections, such as the human brain, consciousness or self-awareness may be an emergent property inherent in sufficiently complex systems."

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Karp, however, is not in favor of halting the development of artificial intelligence software, as put forth in a recent open letter signed by a number of technologists and entrepreneurs.

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“There have been some voices calling for a pause on efforts to develop even more powerful versions of these emerging technologies, in the hope that perhaps our adversaries will join us in considering the capabilities of such systems and the risks they pose to us and others,” he wrote. 

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"The alternative to pausing our current efforts would, however, be to indulge in a fantasy of a world without conflict, and it would be an error to do so. There is no doubt that these newest forms of artificial intelligence have been and will continue to be a decisive factor in the battlefield in the future. Surely, others will be able to debate the merits of proceeding with the development of these technologies in the future. As long as our adversaries continue to move forward, we will not be able to stand still."

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Palantir's stock price was down slightly on Monday, closing at $8.02 per share.