Shyam Sankar
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Headlines · 7
- Palantir CTO Says Some AI Researchers Took Up Smoking, Betting AI Cures Cancer
Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar said on CBS News' Face the Nation that some AI researchers have taken up smoking to signal to peers that they are "all in" on AI, believing it will eventually cure cancer. He named no individuals and offered no evidence for the claim. The remark came during a broader critique in which Sankar described Silicon Valley's AI mood as a "collective hallucination" and a social myth, said some AI safety advocates treat AGI as a near "machine god," and invoked philosopher Blaise Pascal's "God-shaped hole" to describe tech figures redirecting a need for faith onto AGI. The report also notes a counter-trend in a health-obsessed industry, where a few founders, engineers and investors have embraced smoking as social networking or an "unpolished" image.
科技新报 · 🔥 5 - Musk says he has had 'AI psychosis' about six times in the past year
In an interview at the X Takeover event, Elon Musk said he has experienced roughly six bouts of "AI or SI psychosis" over the past year, adding that it may be "more than a little — actually maybe quite serious." "AI psychosis" is not a clinical term and has no agreed definition; it is generally used for heavy AI use that deepens a user's existing delusions, and some psychiatrists say AI can aggravate pre-existing psychological vulnerability. Musk used the phrase to describe believing that AI can understand beauty, saying it is astonishing when AI shows "good taste"; tech figures have also repurposed the term as a self-mocking badge, with Marc Andreessen coining "AIPAAS" and Y Combinator's Garry Tan and Palantir's Shyam Sankar offering their own jokes, while Musk replied "yes" to an Andreessen post on the topic in April.
IT之家 AI · 🔥 6 - Palantir CTO: Pentagon has already replaced Anthropic's Claude models
Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar said on CBS's Face the Nation that the Pentagon has already replaced Anthropic's models with no operational impact, after a dispute over safeguards for military AI in which the company was labelled a supply chain risk. He said the Department now uses models from xAI, OpenAI and Google, as well as open-weight models such as Nvidia's Nemotron, and that the ability to choose and switch models has been driving Palantir's commercial growth. Claude had been part of Palantir's Maven Smart System used by the Pentagon; Sankar also called effective altruism a "millenarian doomsday cult," described military targeting as a process rather than an AI choice, and disputed reporting on the September strike on a school in Minab, Iran, saying human error was the likely cause and that the final report should be awaited.
The Next Web · 🔥 0 - Palantir CTO says some AI researchers have taken up smoking to signal faith in AI
In an interview aired Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar claimed that some AI researchers have started smoking as a way to show fellow researchers they are "all in" on the belief that AI will eventually cure cancer. Sankar described the mindset as a kind of "mass psychosis social delusion" around AI, or AGI as he calls it, invoking Pascal's idea of a God-shaped hole in every person. TechSpot's commentary notes the claim is unverified and comes from a single account, and points out that smoking itself causes multiple types of cancer, undercutting the logic even if AI did help produce treatments; it also mentions a reported AI-developed drug that showed signs of slowing aging, with caveats.
TechSpot · 🔥 0 - Palantir CTO calls AI safety a 'cult' on CBS Face the Nation
Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, called AI safety a "cult" and joked that AI researchers smoke to signal their faith. Host Margaret Brennan opened by citing a CBS poll in which 50% of respondents said AI will create more problems than it solves and 45% of Americans want the government to restrict AI development and use. Rather than engaging with the question of guardrails, Sankar instead named a party he believes is really behind the issue (the source text is truncated at that point).
开源中国 · 🔥 0 - Palantir CTO claims AI researchers smoke to signal faith AI will cure cancer
Gizmodo and cnBeta report that Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar said on CBS's Face the Nation that some AI researchers have taken up smoking to signal to peers how much they believe in AI — telling them they are betting everything on AI eventually curing cancer. Sankar named no researchers and offered no evidence; his point was critical, describing quasi-religious AGI belief in Silicon Valley as a "machine god" and "mass psychosis," invoking Pascal's idea of a God-shaped hole in humans. The reports also cite earlier press accounts of smoking and nicotine use spreading among some tech founders, engineers and investors, and Friend founder Avi Schiffmann's remark that "by the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that" — claims that remain unverified, with no sign AI is close to curing cancer.
Gizmodo · 🔥 0 - Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar on AI targeting and DOD dropping Anthropic
In a CBS News Q&A, Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar discussed the Iran school strike and AI targeting, the US Department of Defense dropping Anthropic, AI liability, and effective altruism, according to the interview transcript excerpted by Techmeme. The available material is a partial transcript and summary, and these are Sankar's own claims and positions rather than independently verified findings.
Techmeme · 🔥 0
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