Palantir Technologies (PLTR) CEO Alex Karp said on Thursday that artificial intelligence developers should face civil and criminal liability for the consequences of their technology, arguing that AI companies lobbying for government regulation are seeking to escape accountability rather than to protect the public.

Karp made the remarks during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." PLTR stock was trading up around 0.6% at $175.35 at the time, and the shares have gained roughly 5% for the week.

Palantir builds AI and data-analytics platforms for government agencies and large enterprises, placing Karp among the executives with a direct stake in how any liability rules are written.

"The first line of defense is you're liable for your own actions," Karp said on air.

His comments quickly drew reaction on social media:

it's actually insane how terrible AI executives like Alex Karp here are marketing their products. he sounds like a complete lunatic on CNBC right now. pic.twitter.com/WAxA3DVMN6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 17, 2026

If AI Is Dangerous, Stop Building It

Karp's argument, in his telling, is simple: if AI leaders genuinely believe the technology is dangerous, they should stop building it. Asking for government regulation instead, he said, is a way to avoid being held personally responsible.

"What is the liability risk for destroying 10% of the world?" he asked on air.

He went further, suggesting that some frontier AI labs may ultimately need to be nationalized. His reasoning: if those companies continue absorbing business data and intellectual property while avoiding liability, the U.S. government becomes the only entity that can shield them from mass lawsuits.

"These businesses have to be nationalized because if you don't nationalize it, every single one of my clients is going to sue," Karp said.

The exchange cuts into one of the most contested questions in AI governance: whether responsibility for an AI system's harms should fall on the companies that build the models, the ones that deploy them, or both.

Data and IP Concerns

Karp also raised concerns about what closed AI models do with customer data. He said businesses using closed models and paying for tokens could be unknowingly handing over their intellectual property to the model providers themselves.

He argued that discounted token pricing is not just a growth strategy. It can also give AI companies access to customer data that helps improve their own models.

Karp linked the issue to what he called the "sovereignty revolution," which he said Palantir helped launch alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The idea is that companies using open models, combined with their own application layer, can keep greater control over their data and technologyn

Where the AI Debate Stands

Karp's comments land in the middle of a very public divide in the technology world over how quickly artificial intelligence should advance, and who bears responsibility when it causes harm.

On one side, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SpaceX's Elon Musk have called for a slower pace of AI development. Karp said he has "a lot of respect" for Amodei, calling him both an ethical entrepreneur and a businessperson.

On the other side, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have pushed back against curbing development. Zuckerberg posted on X: "Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind."

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken a middle position, stressing that humans must stay in control of AI. Microsoft also released a new code of conduct this week for how it trains and operates its AI models.

The safety debate has continued to build. OpenAI disclosed six new cases of unexpected model behavior in the last six months, and a breach involving Hugging Face has added more fuel to the discussion.

How that fight gets resolved — through voluntary codes like Microsoft's, or through liability rules written by legislators rather than shaped by the companies themselves — is the part of the debate still to be decided.

Karp's final word on Thursday: "We need to get serious."

Source: CoinCentral