What does the Australian supermarket chain Coles have in common with the CIA? They have each been customers since last week Palantir TechnologiesAmerican technology company “focused on creating the world’s best user experience with data.”
As a part of the three-year deal, Coles plans to roll out Palantir’s tools in greater than 840 supermarkets to cut the prices and “redefine the way we think about our workforce.”
The technology company, named after the magical seeing stones from The Lord of the Rings, offers end-to-end software that collects, organizes and visualizes customer data into “one platform to rule all of them“. In the case of an intelligence agency, Palantir’s tools could also be helpful discover a terrorist cell through telephone calls and financial transactions; in a health care organization, they will find ways to lower your expenses shortening stays in emergency departments.
For Coles, goal is to “optimize your workforce” by analyzing “over 10 billion rows of data covering every store, team member, shift and allocation across all time slots, every day.”
The announcement is here connected in keeping with Coles’ plan to avoid wasting $1 billion over the subsequent 4 years and beyond 2019 Big Data agreement with Microsoftconstructing effort robotic delivery centersand introduction cameras tracking customers and other technologically advanced security measures.
Palantir trial
What might Palantir-Coles cooperation appear to be in practice?
Typically, Palantir first sends “deployed engineers” to begin working with the organization’s data, which is commonly messy, incomplete and fragmented. These engineers work with various departments and stakeholders to mix data into one compatible whole called “Ontology”, which comprises all information deemed relevant.
Then the info could be entered into the Palantir platforms – on this case, configurable software called Foundry and Artificial intelligence platform.
Platforms enable customers to explore data dense yet user-friendly interfaces full of columns and rows, fields and contours. The AI platform also introduces language models just like ChatGPT.
Users can compare earnings between branches, flag a store that seems inefficient, or discover an upcoming high-spending period based on historical patterns.
This all probably seems trivial, even boring. This is actually less problematic than Palantir’s cooperation with governments and law enforcement, which has been heavily criticized for enabling deportation based on data Or racist policeand I saw an organization described as “evil“.
However, a contract doesn’t need to be overtly sinister to be significant. The surveillance and control technology is silent becomes infrastructure, moving from front-page news to something quietly ticking within the background. In this sense, Palantir is moving from the visible to the operational, unnoticed but powerfully shaping the lives and livelihoods of Australian supermarket employees and customers.
Workforce optimization
We can briefly outline three implications of this agreement.
Firstly, by signing this agreement, Coles sees itself as forward-looking and logistically oriented. Grocery and food market jobs are increasingly becoming data, as are hedge funds, health care, and immigration, which other Palantir clients coordinate.
Last yr, supermarkets were under fire increasing profit margin by the pandemic and the price of living crisis and accused of underpaid employees.
The Palantir deal continues this mining trajectory. Instead of paying staff more or passing the savings on to customers, Coles has chosen to speculate tens of millions in technology to “solve workforce costs” as a part of this system greater effort to cut back costs by $1 billion over the subsequent 4 years. Food (and the labor needed to grow, package, and ship it) is transformed from a human need into an optimization problem.
Garden surrounded by a wall
Secondly, dependency. How I discovered my very own research, Palantir customers enjoy comprehensive data and latest features, but in addition they develop into depending on them. Data is growing; latest servers are needed; License fees are high, but they need to be paid.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Like Apple or Amazon, Palantir’s services excel at making a “seller lock,” an ideal walled garden that is hard for purchasers to depart. This pattern suggests that over the subsequent three years, Coles will increasingly depend on Silicon Valley technology to grasp and manage its business operations. An organization that sells 1 / 4 of Australian groceries could develop into operationally depending on the US tech titan.
Way of seeing
Finally a vision. What Palantir sells is actually a way of seeing. Its dashboards promise view through God’s eyes that may span the complete organization or zoom in on granular information to locate that “needle in a haystack” knowledge.
It has been claimed that this data-driven view is a shortcut to total knowledgea technique to map every operation, expose every essential element, and discover every inefficiency.
Palantir
However, this data inevitably excludes essential social, financial and environmental information. The sweat of employees attempting to pack at pace, the belt-tightening of consumers attempting to make ends meet, and the struggle of farmers to survive unexpected climate impacts will remain.
Details like these never appear on the platform – and if they are not data, they do not matter. Will Palantir’s data-driven myopia impact the way in which Coles views its employees and customers?
By placing Palantir at the middle of its business, Coles is quietly sneaking in several key assumptions: that food is a commodity that should be optimized, that paying for work is a risk somewhat than a responsibility, and that data can capture all the things that is essential. In time increased food insecurityAustralians should definitely ask themselves whether that is the direction one in every of our major grocery suppliers should take.
