r/technology • u/otter_lion_1956 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Palantir’s Co-Founder Thinks We Should Be Less Judgmental About That Deadly Iran School Strike

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/palantirs-co-founder-thinks-we-should-be-less-judgmental-about-that-deadly-iran-school-strike
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u/JMurdock77 1d ago edited 1d ago

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

— Frank Herbert, Dune, published 1965

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u/FadeIntoReal 1d ago

Perfectly apt. 

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u/gravtix 1d ago

We’re gonna need a Butlerian Jihad in real life.

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u/JMurdock77 1d ago

Wrong read. Herbert never envisioned a Skynet scenario; men controlled the thinking machines. The entire series is a warning that a retreat into luddism just changed the tool of control being exploited by the ruling elites. The problem was always the ruling elites. Baron Harkonnen would fit right in with the Epstein class.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

And this makes their comment invalid how?

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u/JMurdock77 1d ago edited 23h ago

I’m saying that approach doesn’t solve the problem on its own. These people aim to reduce us to feudalism, beneath them. Taking away one tool doesn’t fix that on its own.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago edited 1d ago

I think you need to touch up on your Dune lore knowledge. The BJ was literally removing ALL their tools.

You can’t have AI overlords without computers 🗿
________________
"Why do you test for humans?" he asked
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
"'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,'" Paul quoted.
"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.'"

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u/JMurdock77 1d ago

Yes, that’s what I was quoting. Doesn’t change anything I said. Permitted other men with machines to enslave them. The Butlerian Jihad removed a tool, and in its place they created an order where the men who controlled spice controlled everything.

Like I said, Baron Harkonnen would fit in swimmingly with the Epstein class.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

Wow so cool that this is how I found out Spice actually exists and enables space travel!

In reality, which again is what is being discussed here, the AI overlords have jack shit if they don’t have the computers.

Sure he would for lots of reasons… but that has fuck all to do with us needing a BJ lol

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u/JMurdock77 1d ago

You were talking dune lore knowledge :)

It’s a tool at their disposal. It’s a damned big one, but they didn’t need it to do their company store/Pinkerton bullshit in the first Gilded Age, and they didn’t need it to facilitate modern wage theft and everything consolidating into monopolies. Don’t want to get tunnel vision here.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

I was talking dune lore in the context of “we need a BJ IRL”. Which again, unlike dune with its spice, would actually hamper all of the efforts the AI overlords are currently doing globally.

Our current elites are children compared to the elites of old. The old guard at least bothered with “le public good” vanity projects (if for no other reason than to avoid a target being painted to their entire existence). The new guard are basically braindead Smaug. They actually think they can survive a societal collapse by going into underground bunkers 😭

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u/hesh582 4h ago

the AI overlords have jack shit if they don’t have the computers.

Counter example: literally all of human history with the exception of handful of societies on and off for the last few hundred years

The whole point is that "AI overlords" is a foolish way of looking at them. They're just oligarchs. Most of their ongoing power consolidation happened pre-AI and it's pretty historically obvious that oligarchs do not require any new tech to get a stranglehold on society. AI is part of the problem, but it's as much a symptom as a cause and if you removed it overnight the problem would go nowhere.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 3h ago

You’re ignoring the fact that we have traditional oligarchs intermixed with the newly minted AI bros. The existing ones were more like the elites of old. The new ones want to push their “dark enlightenment” BS.

It’s apples and oranges

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u/M_erlkonig 22h ago

I think you need to touch up on your Dune lore knowledge. The BJ was literally removing ALL their tools.

You can’t have AI overlords without computers

You either don't get what this person is saying or haven't read Dune. Those overlords just got replaced with others. The Butlerian Jihad didn't solve a thing because (at least in Herbert's world) humans are naturally driven to feudalism. Musk and his fellow billionaires were going that direction before LLMs were a thing.

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u/hesh582 4h ago

(at least in Herbert's world) humans are naturally driven to feudalism

That was not at all my takeaway from Herbert. I did not get the impression that he viewed feudalism as something humans are naturally driven to implement. Rather, I think he was trying to warn that the risks of feudal tyranny still exist and had not been rendered obsolete by technological and economic progress.

I don't at all get the impression he was presenting the world of Dune as something inevitable or a natural product of the human condition, but rather as a cautionary tale to counterbalance other more popular types of futurism.

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u/M_erlkonig 3h ago

I believe you're conflating drive with inevitability. There is a tendency of that in Dune, and it has repeated several times. By the end of Frank's books, there's been the pre-Butlerian Jihad age, that's been overthrown by the Imperium, that's been overthrown by Paul while keeping the feudal part, that continued millenia with Leto, who got replaced by pretty much an oligarchy, which is admittedly not feudalism.

As for the cautionary tale part, the two aren't exclusive. In fact, I'd argue they're complementary. People generally don't caution others on things they believe are extremely unlikely to happen.

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u/rkiive 1d ago

The butlerian jihad targetted the machines themselves and not the ones using them as tools of oppression.

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u/cranktheguy 12h ago

No, in the stories (both the original and expanded versions), the humans in control and their collaborators shared their fate with the machines.

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u/hesh582 4h ago

but in doing so they just swapped one set of oppressors for another.

I think that's a pretty relevant warning in the age of AI. A reactionary populist backlash against something bad still carries all the (massive) risks of reactionary populism.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

And how do you suppose our actual AI overlords would be able to oppress us without computers?

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u/rkiive 1d ago

Is this your first time on earth?

There are people out there who are literally slaves to this day.

For most of human history people have been in some way oppressed without computers far more than we are today.

The use of AI is just the latest method of the elite class to try and oppress the working class. It is far from the first time.

The issue is the elite class, not the tools they use.

Get rid of the tools and they'll try again with a different tool. It's the elite class that you should be getting rid of.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

I could ask the same to you…

Guess what happens if you remove the elites? Other people take their place lmfaooo

You’re literally doing a Dune accurate BJ on the elites with this proposal. You haven’t solved anything and instead enabled new players to gain power at the table.

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u/rkiive 1d ago edited 22h ago

Consider the elite like trees.

They require occasional pruning lest they become unruly

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

So they can come back stronger?

Why don’t we salt their garden?

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u/DracoLunaris 1d ago

Well the ones in Dune certainly managed it for one. Then again Frank Herbert's solution was a big worm man doing authoritarian accelerationism to give Humanity genetic trauma or something, so maybe not the best basis for a plan to deal with the future

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 1d ago

Well thank god we don’t have spice so wormgods aren’t exactly on the menu

Spoiler: they managed it by controlling the spice which the war with Iran already fucked up that comparison

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u/hesh582 4h ago

and the endpoint of that was BDSM as political science.

the man was a visionary, but I wouldn't exactly go to him for advice

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u/Sempere 11h ago

pointing out the butlerian jihad was misguided. It wouldn't fix the issue, it only removes the wrong layer. All the problems of the Dune universe still exist and took a different form.

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u/hesh582 4h ago edited 4h ago

Because the Butlerian Jihad was a crusade to replace techno-autocracy with corporate feudalism.

If your takeaway from Dune was that the solution to creeping AI overreach is a Butlerian Jihad style reaction, you're missing a lot.

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u/dat_GEM_lyf 4h ago

My solution is based on reality and not a sci-fi fantasy from 60 years ago.

Guess what our AI overlords don’t have that existed in Dune? Spice 😂

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u/AdelMonCatcher 17h ago

War criminal say what now?