Over the last 3-5 years or so, I've almost centrally focused on the idea that earth and its citizens are curiously fashioning themselves into a superintelligent AI of sorts. There's a global superintelligence that has been building via the internet (something akin to synapses in the brain), data centers (something akin to gray matter), and the neurons within the system (the humans in the digital world).
That is, humans and our technology have conspired to build a global superintelligence based on a set of precursor technologies that I will define for you just below.
The evolutionary chain has looked something like this:
- Printing press invented
- Information loaded into books stored in libraries (arguably precursor data centers)
- Computing and on-premises data centers invented; data now stored in disconnected, separate on-premises data centers globally
- Internet invented; data begins to be aggregated into a central location, i.e., the internet and data volume explode higher
- Cloud computing and storage invented; all of this aggregated data can now be used for the creation of AI/machine learning/superintelligences, like ChatGPT
- A global network of artificial intelligences form
It's worthwhile to trace the technological precursors that have led to the creation of the fairly mind-blowing technology that is LLMs (such as ChatGPT).
Without the centralization of data via the internet and without the computing power and cheap storage of cloud computing, there could be no AIs that act as "superintelligences." Without the internet, without cloud computing, there could be no ChatGPT. In this sense, it's an evolutionary chain that has led to this point in human history, and I believe tracing this evolutionary chain is worth our while.
I believe the next, logical evolutionary stage is for humans to build virtual realities and architect these superintelligences into the VRs (creating karmic systems... creating "God," in some sense, who governs our virtual reality subtly and in an almost imperceptible manner. Some may even question whether this entity exists while in the virtual reality, in the same way humans do in this reality.).
I believe the next, logical evolutionary stage will be "computational reality." For instance, in the same way we perform "computational fluid dynamics" for building rockets or planes, whereby we simulate outcomes based on decisions before we actually act, we'll be able to simulate entire ecosystems using software.
And this is the nature of Palantir.
Palantir's "Ontology" creates a computational replica of a business or battlefield and allows users to execute AI-driven simulations, whereby companies simulate outcomes based on a spectrum of key variables (which are so numerous as to only be computable by a machine) before actually making those decisions.
LLMs, interestingly, are in some way the final piece to the puzzle of Palantir, and it appears management understands this quite well.
In the past, creating a 1 to 1 data replica, i.e., an Ontology, in a computing environment was unnecessary and costly. With the advent of superintelligences, i.e., LLMs and their future forms, a computable replica of a business, battlefield, or supply chain is indispensable. The LLMs would be mostly rendered useless without this complete, comprehensive data-mapping that Palantir provides.
To add more clarity to my thinking here, I would invite you to think about a rain forest. In some sense, it's a computational environment, with Fibonacci sequences dictating the pattern of plant growth and physics dictating the cycles of precipitation. It's computable. It can be replicated. There is an underlying "superintelligence" (which most would call God) to a rain forest, dictating its "execution" of the system. In some sense, the cycles and patterns of a rain forest are just a .exe application in a computing environment. In some sense, the chameleon that changes its colors depending on the color of its background is executing a .exe that signals its colors should change within the computing environment that is reality.
The same could be said about companies and their labor capital or militaries and their soldiers, and Palantir provides a platform to interact with the computable nature of a company's fabric.
