[Literary Studies (in the Humanities) in the Age of AI, Populism and Anti-Academic Resentment

Lecture and Discussion: 'Dual Use' of Humanities Concepts? AI, Surveillance Technology and the Politics of Big Tech - The Case of Peter Thiel, Alex Karp and Palantir. (Palantir: One of the most successful, mysterious and controversial companies, co-founded and still supported by anti-democratic right-winger Peter Thiel and criticized almost from the start for helping to bring about the surveillance state and, more recently, for openly providing software support for ICE deportations. From its inception over 20 years ago, however, Palantir’s CEO has been Alex Karp, long a self-identified “socialist”, “Marxist” or “leftist”, who studied with Habermas in the late 1990s and who holds a 2002 PhD in social psychology from Frankfurt. This raises a number of questions: How does Karp use humanities concepts and figures of thought to “justify” Palantir’s business? Can we trace a line from his “leftist” Frankfurt school dissertation to his accounts of Palantir’s business model, and to his recent techno-nationalist positions? And is the notion of “dual use” of humanities ideas – the appropriation of originally “progressive” concepts for potentially illiberal, anti-democratic or authoritarian purposes – merely provocative, or is it analytically useful?)

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