Forget sleepmaxxing and cold plunging: smoking is the new lifestyle flex among AI researchers.
At least, that’s according to Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, who said some AI researchers are taking up smoking to signal their belief that AI will eventually cure cancer.
“So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” Sankar said in an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
The logic, he said, is: “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in.”
Sankar did not name any researchers or provide evidence for the claim. Smoking remains a major cause of preventable illness and death, and no AI breakthrough has eliminated the health risks associated with cigarettes.
But the Palantir executive’s remarks echo a countercurrent already visible in parts of the tech industry.
As Business Insider’s Henry Chandonnet reported last month, a small group of founders, engineers, and investors has embraced cigarettes in a sector otherwise known for optimizing their health with cold plunges, sleep tracking, and peptide treatments.
For some of them, a cigarette break is an opportunity to meet people and network. For others, it’s a way to come across as more relaxed and less polished than the typical startup founder.
And some AI believers expect the technology to make smoking-related health risks a thing of the past.
“By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that,” Avi Schiffmann, the founder of AI wearable startup Friend, previously told Business Insider.
‘The machine god of AGI’
In the CBS News interview, Sankar raised the smoking anecdote while criticizing what he called Silicon Valley’s “mass psychosis” and “social delusion” around AI.
He has been outspoken in his criticism of AI safety advocates, whom he accused in the interview of treating artificial general intelligence as a “machine god.”
Invoking philosopher Blaise Pascal’s idea that humans have a “God-shaped hole” in their hearts, Sankar said that some people in Silicon Valley have placed quasi-religious faith in AGI.
“I think it’s important to understand that many of these folks in Silicon Valley who are building this technology have filled that hole with the machine god of AGI,” Sankar said.
