Why Are Palantir and OpenAI Scared of Alex Bores?
About this episode
The episode asks what one state legislator learned about power and AI safety inside Palantir. Bores, a former Palantir data scientist now in the New York Assembly, says his years deploying Palantir software for intelligence agencies, insurers, and corporations taught him the biggest AI risk is not superintelligence but surveillance: the merger of government and corporate data into a panopticon. He describes co-writing and passing New York's RAISE Act — the first US law requiring frontier AI labs to publish safety plans and report dangerous capabilities — over intense opposition from OpenAI, Google, and Palantir-linked lobbyists, whose super PACs now target him. Klein presses him on whether state AI regulation is futile given federal preemption efforts and the race with China, and on the tension between his pro-growth housing politics and his AI warnings; Bores argues both stem from the belief that institutions should serve ordinary people, not concentrated power.