On April 19, the American tech-giant Palantir tweeted a 22-point summary of its CEO Alexander C. Karp’s book, The Technological Republic (co-authored with Nicholas Zamiska). In it, the company decries corporate inclusivity, the equality of cultures, and, more worryingly, the limits of soft power. “The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal,” it says. “It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.” Palantir then proceeds to point out that the question is no longer whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used to build weapons, but who it will build them for and for what purpose.

It is difficult to read Palantir’s programme and not feel a foreboding sense of anxiety about where AI is taking us. It has after all crept into every stream of life, often with devastating consequences. With every passing day, it is evident that these companies will shape how people interact with each other, how the economies of the world develop, and even how nations wage wars.