The Domain
Research area for Masters
In April this year, UK tech newspaper the Register unveiled discussions between US tech giant Palantir and the UK Government about using their software, Foundry, to address the NHS strikes. The UK Government decided against engaging with Palantir because of huge costs, or possible because of the tories not ready to show their true colours in public. The integration of Palantir's Foundry platform sparked concerns for many reasons, data protection being one, another being a document underscoring 'Strike Analysis' as one of its primary functions.
Palantir's Foundry platform showcases its prowess in real-time simulations powered by AI and ML, resembling a comprehensive digital overseer. Its 'Personal Readiness' whitepaper, specifically tailored to HR operations, provides detailed workforce data, empowering managers to strategise effectively. Notably, this tool seems designed primarily for managerial and HR professionals, suggesting a move towards automated oversight of workers.
Why do these simulations resonate with the corporate board? Can they truly unearth worthwhile insights from these analytical automatons? And finally, in this moment of massive strike actions in the west, what implications does this have for industrial disputes?
RE:Research
My masters research has been a deep dive into such simulations. I aim to discern their outcomes and question their authenticity. I take a critical eye towards simulations, and I aspire to design a simulation that champions the causes of unions and the workforce, those who are currently at the heel of this workplace automation.
My research looks into these simulations. What results might they might manifest and is there any real value to those results. I take a critical eye towards simulations and, alongside the research, attempt to create my own simulation, one which benefits the unions and workers, people and movements, that are often at the heel of large scale simulation tools.
Up until this point I've called my work a critique of simulations, although I'm unsure whether that it's shaping up that way. I'd like for this to be a tool for unions to map out industrial action and take to their bosses as a way of creating the threat of competition between workers and hr without directly effecting workers. How this tool shapes a space, how it enables its agents is intended with bias.
on biases
Simulations craft our reality in many ways. One of this year's blockbuster movies, Gran Turismo, is the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer who managed to become an actual F1 driver after being one of the best in the world at the game which shares the film's title. Simulations like SimCity give players the opportunity to play out becoming a city's mayor. In 2002 Mayoral candidates in Warsaw's elections each played a game of SimCity in front of the electorate he winner, Lech Kaczyński, went on to become the country's president.
SimCity 3000, despite being both entertaining and a brutally difficult game, is not a true to life model. In 2010, Vincent Ocasla, student from the Philipines created the project Magnasanti, stating that he had 'completed' SimCity by building the maximum scale city the game would allow for. The city is a hellscape of lives made unliveable, his youtube documentary is inspired by Koyaanisquatsi (1982) “Hidden under the illusion of order and greatness lies suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle—this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population.”
In 1974, the Club of Rome used simulations in a report called 'Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World', informally known as the Club of Rome report. This report contained a simulation called the World3 model, a map to simulate the group's Malthusian portrayal of the world. In this simulation whatever changes occur, massive spiked population decline happens at some point in the 2050s. A version of the simulation is available here: https://insightmaker.com/insight/2pCL5ePy8wWgr4SN8BQ4DD/The-World3-Model-Classic-World-Simulation World3 showed simulations for what they are, confined, only able to expand within their creators parameters, this extremely dystopic view of the next century, plagued by all four horsemen of the apocalypse, is one which allows for no change in situations, no innovative farming solutions to create more food, it does allow for policy changes around pollution however all of these, no matter how the simulation is ran, are too little too late for the global population. The Club of Rome have their voice in the ears of the powerful, conservative and reactionary forces listen to these prophecies because this idea of inevitable change concedes to their ideology.
Simulations, especially those which predict things at societal scale, hide behind the data they provide, their mechanisms obfuscated from view as a type of inevitable magic, the worlds they build apolitical. As soon as any amount of light lands on them they shrink into their core parts, an abstraction of reality created by someone who deemed themselves worthy of crafting it. Gran Turismo has created a driver, SimCity a mayor and the Club of Rome a world without a tomorrow.
Final thoughts
It's important to recognise the bias present in simulating reality. I'd hazard to make an assumption that Palantir's hidden technology includes the inherit biases involved in a company ran by Peter Thiel, and the hires that company makes. If these biases follow the same as the Club of Rome, doomsday predictions on small, workplace by workplace scales would be a catastrophic loss of workers rights.
https://www.palantir.com/offerings/readiness/
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/nhs_england_palantir_tech_optout/
https://citymonitor.ai/community/2002-warsaws-mayoral-candidates-all-competed-game-simcity-and-future-president-won-733
Gran Turismo movie
https://citymonitor.ai/community/2002-warsaws-mayoral-candidates-all-competed-game-simcity-and-future-president-won-733
https://jacobin.com/2014/10/les-simerables/