Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar has a theory about why some AI researchers have started smoking: it is a way of showing how much they believe in the technology.
“So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” Sankar said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. The logic, as he described it: “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in.”
Sankar named no researchers and offered no evidence. Smoking remains a major cause of preventable illness and death, and no AI breakthrough has removed the health risks of cigarettes.
A small cigarette culture in tech
His remark echoes something already visible in parts of the industry. Business Insider’s Henry Chandonnet reported last month that a small group of founders, engineers and investors has taken up cigarettes in a sector better known for cold plunges, sleep tracking and peptide treatments. For some, a smoke break is a chance to network. For others it is a way to seem more relaxed than the polished startup founder.
Some believers expect the technology to make the risk disappear. “By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that,” Avi Schiffmann, founder of the AI wearable startup Friend, previously told Business Insider.
“Machine god”
Sankar raised the anecdote while criticising what he called Silicon Valley’s “mass psychosis” and “social delusion” around AI. He also took aim at AI safety advocates, accusing them of treating artificial general intelligence as a “machine god.” Invoking Blaise Pascal’s idea of a “God-shaped hole” in the human heart, he said many people building the technology have filled it with AGI.
The encouraging part is that research on AI in medicine continues, but patients should not treat any tool as a cure that cancels the harm of tobacco. If you smoke and want help to stop, talk to your doctor.
