Palantir's Shyam Sankar: Americans are 'being lied to' about AI job displacement fears
EXCLUSIVE— "The American people are being lied to about AI," Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar warns in the opening line of his new Fox News op-ed. And one of the biggest lies, he said, is that artificial intelligence is coming for Americans' jobs.
Doomsday scenarios surrounding AI suggest that the growth of the tool will result in job cuts because the technology will replace traditional labor. Sankar said fears about technological advancements are commonplace, going back to even the 16th century.
"Well, of course, if we look through history, every time we have a new, profound technology, there is an incredible amount of fear," Sankar told Fox News Digital. "You can go back to Elizabeth I, who refused to grant a patent on a sewing machine because she thought it might lead to mass unemployment. What you really see is that we're listening to the wrong people. Every time you have one of these revolutions — whether it's the telescope, or the microscope, or the power loom — it's very tempting to listen to the inventors of the technology."
But it is not the inventors who decide the impact of the technologies, he said. It's the people who wield the technology.
PALANTIR CTO SHYAM SANKAR: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE BEING LIED TO ABOUT AI
The frontline workers of America need to have their voices heard, Sankar said, referencing another historical figure to drive his point home.
"Galileo did not invent the telescope," Sankar noted. "He used the telescope to discover planetary motion. Similarly, we are listening to the inventors of AI, when we should be listening to the people who are not invited to give op-eds, who are not asked to write essays. The frontline workers in America whose jobs are being transformed for the better with AI. How do they feel? Are they optimistic? Are they not? How do they think about their children's future in a country powered by AI? And I think you would find a very different narrative."
Artificial intelligence will transform the global workforce by 2050, according to research from PwC, McKinsey and the World Economic Forum, Forbes has reported. Estimates suggest that up to 60% of current jobs will require significant adaptation due to AI as it becomes an integral part of the workplace.
But Sankar said the change is a welcome one, as companies learn to increase their productivity. The tech expert used healthcare workers as an example of a workforce that is particularly benefiting from the technology, as the tool can free up time for ICU nurses to spend less time with their heads buried in data and more face time with their patients.
"You spend time with these industrial companies, what you're finding is actually they're able to hire more people," Sankar told Fox News Digital. "They're getting more efficient at the parts that cause deadweight loss. That means that they can actually hire more workers to do productive things. So net, you have job creation."
"And I don't just mean people who are building data centers," he added. "I mean, in the industrial heartland, companies that actually do things. In the ICU, a nurse has more time to spend with the patient, less time to munch the data. This is the root of the issue. It's a tools-driven revolution, not a concept. You know, we're too enamored with AI as a concept, as opposed to AI as a tool for the American worker."
Sankar dismissed doomsday scenarios surrounding AI more broadly.
"You have these kind of dual narratives — one that is wildly dystopic — that this is a technology that's going to destroy jobs, destroy purpose and meaning," he said. "And on the other end, you have a narrative that's wildly utopic, where it's going to usher in a new sort of era where we will maybe be reduced to the equivalent of a house cat. And I think both of these miss a fundamental point of human agency."
"The future of AI has not been determined," he said. "It is being decided every single day by the actions that we take. And I think it'd be fair to say humans are going to use AI to do things. Are we going to use it to build trinkets of marginal value or are we going to use it to actually re-industrialize the country, to drive American prosperity, to create jobs, to have a normative view of the productivity that we can get from this, to make our country great."