Palantir CTO says AI researchers took up smoking to prove a hypothesis

People have always found ways to prove how strongly they believe in something. Some put their money on the line, and some put their reputations up for grabs.

In Silicon Valley, belief in artificial intelligence (AI) has turned into its own kind of identity. Founders talk about curing diseases, ending scarcity and building machines smarter than any person alive.

Those promises have helped drive enormous investment. They have also created a culture where the boldest prediction often gets the most attention.

Few companies have benefited from that wave more than Palantir. Its software helps governments and corporations put AI to work, and its stock has become a favorite of retail investors betting on the trend.

Now one of Palantir’s top executives says the culture around AI has gone too far. The example he chose to make his point is a strange one.

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Oct. 11, that some AI researchers have taken up smoking. Their reasoning, he said, is that AI will cure cancer before cigarettes can hurt them.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says some AI researchers have started smoking to signal their faith in AI.

Yona Elsner / Getty Images

Shyam Sankar’s claim about researchers and cigarettes

“So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” Sankar said, according to Business Insider.

He described the thinking behind it in the researchers’ own imagined words.

“I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in,” Sankar said.

More Artificial Intelligence:

Sankar did not name any researchers or provide evidence for the claim, Business Insider reported. The outlet noted that its own reporter had written the previous month about some people in tech taking up smoking, in an industry better known for obsessing over health.

That earlier reporting captured the same mindset. “By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that,” Avi Schiffmann, founder of AI wearable startup Friend, told Business Insider.

Why Palantir’s CTO calls the AI hype ‘mass psychosis’

Sankar told the story as a criticism. He raised it while attacking what he called the “mass psychosis” and “social delusion” surrounding AI in Silicon Valley, according to Benzinga.

He aimed that criticism at both ends of the debate. Warnings that AI could destroy humanity reflect a theological view more than an evidence-based one, Sankar argued, Benzinga reported.

He also took a swipe at the belief that AI will become something close to a god. People have “filled that hole with the machine god of AGI,” Sankar said, referring to artificial general intelligence, Business Insider reported.

Sankar has pushed a similar line before. In September, he criticized the effective altruism movement’s influence on AI safety debates, arguing that a small group should not set the pace of technological progress, according to Benzinga.

His prescription is more practical. The industry needs to prove AI can strengthen national prosperity and security, and it needs to build safety into products from the start, Sankar said.

The health math behind betting on a cancer cure

Here is the problem with the bet Sankar described. No AI breakthrough has removed the health risks of cigarettes, Business Insider noted.

Smoking and secondhand smoke exposure cause more than 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S., or nearly one in five deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cigarette smoking “is the leading preventable cause of disease, death, and disability in the United States,” the CDC says.

I think that is what makes Sankar’s anecdote land. The story works as a warning precisely because the wager is so lopsided:

The cost is certain. Smoking’s damage is well-documented and starts adding up long before any illness appears.
The payoff is speculative. Nobody can say when, or whether, AI will deliver a cure for the cancers smoking causes.
The signal is social. By Sankar’s account, the point is to impress peers.

If you or someone you know wants help quitting, free support is available through 1-800-QUIT-NOW, the national quitline listed by the CDC.

Palantir stock investors get an unusual warning from inside

Palantir shares traded around $208.81 when Benzinga published its report on Monday, Oct. 12.

For investors, the irony is hard to miss. Palantir has been one of the stock market’s biggest AI winners, and its own CTO is now warning that the culture around AI has slipped into delusion.

In my view, that is consistent with how Palantir likes to position itself. The company pitches AI as software that has to work inside governments and corporations right now, and Sankar’s comments reinforce that pitch.

The takeaway for anyone holding AI stocks is to separate the business from the belief system. Contracts, revenue and margins can be measured, while promises about curing cancer on a deadline cannot.

A few questions can help you tell the difference when the next bold AI prediction lands:

Who is making the claim? Executives and researchers often benefit when investors believe the biggest version of the story.
Is there a timeline and a measure? A forecast with a date and a number can be checked later. A vague promise cannot.
What does the company sell right now? Revenue from paying customers tells you more than a vision for 2035.

Sankar’s anecdote is extreme, but the habit it describes is common. When belief starts to replace evidence, investors tend to pay for it eventually, and in this case the researchers he described are betting their health.