Palantir CEO Alex Karp does not want American companies to put the brakes on artificial intelligence (AI) development. The chief executive of one of America’s leading defense tech and software companies doesn’t want US companies to slow down AI development even if there are growing concerns about the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI models. His argument is linked directly to China and the possibility of losing a strategic advantage in the race for AI. Karp says he would support pausing the technology if there were no adversaries, but that is not the world the US is operating in.Karp’s comments come as several prominent AI leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, have backed calls for a slowdown, while US President Donald Trump has also rejected the idea, warning that it could benefit China.Alex Karp says US cannot pause AIIn a recent interview with CNBC, Karp explained that he would actually support a pause if there were no geopolitical rivals pushing ahead with the technology.“If we didn’t have the adversaries, we’d have, I would be very in favour of pausing this technology completely, but we do. And that’s why pausing is just… You can’t pause it because it’s a structural advantage both for LLMs and algorithms,” he explained.According to Karp, the US also needs to focus on making AI work in classified environments, particularly for defence and national security.“So getting algorithms and LLMs to work in the classified context is gonna take a very specialised spot; you could explain how it works, but the fact is, this is gonna be a bonanza for the US economy,” he noted.Why Karp is concerned about ChinaKarp was also asked how concerned he is about China. Responding to that, he said, “Everyone’s very concerned.”He added relations between the US and China have changed significantly since he first began speaking about the issue.“I think we were in a conversation this morning where I referenced when we first started talking about China and America, and I said this was not gonna end well. That was a controversial statement. Now, it’s consensus,” Karp highlightedKarp added that the US is increasingly united in its concerns about China’s leadership and believes China may respond by increasing its aggression.“America is fairly unified in the idea that people running China aren’t acting in a way we can accept. And I think the consensus, if I had to guess, in China we’re never gonna get this back on the rails with America, so we should up the aggression,” he said.AI slowdown debate is growingKarp’s comments come at a time when some of the biggest names in AI are calling for greater caution.Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has urged AI companies to slow the growth of frontier AI capabilities and introduce stronger safety standards. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has backed the call, while Elon Musk and Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis have also supported greater caution.Not everyone agrees. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has questioned the motivation behind some of these warnings, while AI researcher François Chollet has warned that calls for regulation could potentially hurt open-source AI development.Donald Trump also rejects AI slowdownUS President Donald Trump has strongly opposed calls to slow AI development. He has described the push as a “sick conspiracy against AI” and argued that slowing down could give China an advantage.Vice President JD Vance has also criticised the proposals, describing them as a “Trojan horse” that could allow large technology companies to strengthen their position through regulation.
