> Palantir has previously defended its work, saying it has led to about 99,000 extra operations being scheduled in the NHS

No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.

> helped UK police tackle domestic violence

And precisely how was this done?

> Palantir will have to destroy data after completion of the contract

Contractual obligations that are not practically enforceable will not be honored. I don't think these individual administrative agencies have the acumen necessary to correctly negotiate these contracts.

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remarkEon 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>And precisely how was this done?

Can't find the article atm, but it was basically pre-crime from Minority Report (without the pre-cogs, obviously). They looked at large datasets and built a predictive model, correlating things like race and prior criminal history to infer who was more likely to re-offend. At scale, this works. Ethical issues abound, however.

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themafia 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> At scale, this works.

We're going to need a definition of "works." The false positive rate seems to be notable since those stories readily percolate into media whenever these schemes are implemented and the damage done from those is absolutely massive.

The idea that criminals are likely to re-offend is not new. What to do about this has always been the challenge. Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Unless, of course, you are invested in the "private prison" industry.

	▲	remarkEon 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Simply over policing this segment is not any type of solution. Just curious, why? This seems like the obvious, lowest cost solution. Rates of recidivism are known data points, and crime in most American cities is actually committed by a very, very small population of repeat offenders. Seems like there is much upside to simply monitoring the situation.

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parineum 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.

That's not their job, that's the governments' job. So much of this (the article and your comment) is putting so much on Palantir when they are just doing the job asked of them. They don't work for the people, the government does.

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schubidubiduba 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They likely bribed someone in the government to get that contract though.

Regardless, it is ridiculous to absolve corporations and the people running them from all accountability, just because their aim is ever more money. In fact, that should make you criticize them more, not less.

	▲	parineum 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> They likely bribed someone in the government to get that contract though. No hard evidence of this was provided or is readily available.