Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar Says Some AI Researchers Are Taking Up Smoking, Betting AI Will Cure Cancer
A costly signal of faith
Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar said on CBS's Face the Nation that some AI researchers have taken up smoking as a signal of their belief that AI will cure cancer. Sankar used the anecdote to criticize what he called a "mass psychosis" and "social delusion" around artificial general intelligence in Silicon Valley.
"So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI," Sankar said. Describing the mindset, he added: "I believe so much in AI that it's going to cure cancer. So I will, I'm showing you my chips are all in."
The 'machine God'
Sankar argued that many builders of the technology have filled what he called a "god-shaped hole" in their hearts with "the machine God of AGI," and that both extreme doom predictions and extreme optimism distract from the practical question of whether AI is delivering value to workers and the economy now. He also criticized the effective altruism movement's influence over the pace of AI development, and said tech companies have two responsibilities: prove AI strengthens national prosperity and security, and engineer safety into products from the start.
Host Margaret Brennan reacted to the smoking claim with "What? That makes no sense." Sankar did not name any researchers. But the idea has surfaced before: Avi Schiffmann, founder of AI wearable startup Friend, previously told Business Insider that some researchers reason that "by the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that." Business Insider has also reported a broader cigarette revival among some founders, engineers and investors.
The medical reality check
Oncologists are not buying the timeline. Florian Markowetz, professor of computational oncology at the University of Cambridge, told IFL Science that a complete cure for cancer is "very, very unlikely" because cancer is many diseases with different mechanisms, though he expects better drugs, earlier detection and longer lives. Smoking remains a leading cause of preventable illness and death, including several cancers and other fatal conditions that no AI treatment timeline changes.
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How this could hit the options market
The practical market read is not about cigarettes; it is that a senior executive at PLTR went on Sunday television to argue the AI debate has detached from delivered value. PLTR trades at one of the richest multiples in large-cap tech, which makes it the name most sensitive to any shift from AI faith to AI accounting. Watch flow in PLTR around Sankar's media appearances and Palantir's government contract news, and tobacco names like MO only if the 'smoking as status signal' story keeps spreading beyond anecdote.
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