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.
The remarks put Silicon Valley's faith-like AGI narratives on the record and underline that optimism about future AI medical breakthroughs cannot substitute for present health risks and lengthy clinical validation.