Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, Criticizes UK's Decision to Invite China to AI Summit: 'If It Was My Decision…'

During BBC’s “Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg” program, Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR, said that he would not have invited China to the upcoming AI Summit in the U.K. if he had the power to decide upon the attendees of the summit.

As per a BBC report, Karp’s comment comes at a time when U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is being criticized for inviting China amid tense relations with the country.

“I believe that we are in an arms race and that the world is fracturing and if it was my decision to invite adversarial countries I would not have,” Karp said.

He also expressed his belief that the summit “is positioning the United Kingdom to be the leader in Europe.”

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Karp also commented on Palantir’s current bid for a 500-million-pound ($607 million) contract to provide AI software to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to improve service delivery. He made clear that the potential sale of NHS data would be a government decision, stressing that his company would not have access to the collected data.

Palantir has previously raised eyebrows for its involvement in the UK health service after charging the NHS only 1 pound in 2020 to develop its Covid data store. Karp defended this strategy, claiming it saved “thousands and thousands and thousands of lives” during the pandemic.

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