Dozens of protesters gathered near Riverside Drive and South Congress Avenue to protest the software, data integration and artificial intelligence firm Palantir. The protesters gathered on Thursday outside 8VC, a venture capital firm based in Austin whose co-founder has ties to Palantir.
The group chanted "No ICE, no war, no Palantir," blocking lanes of South Congress, holding up banners and baby-sized shoes, representing the children taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Medicaid officials provided data on millions of people to ICE, which was then shared with Palantir, according to NPR reporting.
The protest, organized by the National Nurses Union, was held in cities across the United States, including Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Portland, Asheville and New Orleans.
Monica Gonzalez, a member of the National Nurses Union, said the 8VC office was chosen as a protest site in Austin because Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder and managing partner at the company, also co-founded Palantir in 2003, according to 8VC's website.
Gonzalez said the protest was held to take a stand against Palantir AI technology, which she said is now being used by HCA Healthcare through Timpani, a scheduling app. HCA Healthcare is the largest for-profit hospital operator in the United States, according to a press release by National Nurses United. It also operates St. David's hospitals and health centers in Central Texas.
"Timpani is used for making patient assignments, staffing, and to the detriment of the nurses, sometimes they short-staff them," Gonzalez said. "And those decisions should be made by people. Those should be human decisions, not an artificial intelligence machine making the decisions."
Protesters also put stickers and posters with the words "Palantir Out!" on the front of the 8VC building.
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, was there urging the crowd to continue to protest AI encroachment in healthcare and society.
"We have to block this ridiculous AI oligarchy from Palantir," Casar said, addressing the crowd of protesters. "Both for ourselves but also for those babies, for our jobs, but also for future jobs. Because we already live in an era of mass inequality, but these AI billionaires want to put that oligarchy on steroids. They want a few billionaires to become trillionaires and for everybody else to get screwed."
Jake Medwell, a co-founder of 8VC, came out from the firm's office after the protest speeches.
"If you're going to protest, you should do your research, right?" Medwell said. "You should know that 8VC has nothing to do with Palantir, except for one of my partners [who] happened to start it years ago."
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