Palantir CTO reveals AI researchers are taking up smoking to signal to other researchers that they believe AI will cure cancer--and calls it a “mass psychosis”

Shyam Sankar (CTO): “But if you understand that it’s actually a theological critique, then you can kind of weigh it against the empirical facts of what is actually happening out there.

“I think there’s a profound truth to Pascal’s saying that every human has a God-shaped hole in their heart. And 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.

“And I mean, there’s so many interesting stories around this. For example, so many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI.”

Margaret Brennan: “What? That makes no sense. What do you think?”

Shyam Sankar: “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in. So there is kind of this mass psychosis, social delusion around it.”

Source: Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan's interview with Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar. Aired on Oct. 11, 2026.

Even if it cures cancer (and it won’t), why smoking? I’ve smoked cigarettes. They’re gross. It is dirty. It tastes bad. It smells bad. It’s clearly unhealthy, immediately. It’s linked to dozens of other problems.

Maybe I should rip all the stairs out in my house, for when they discover teleporting in a few weeks.

Well they work for Palantir or the current corporate roster of AI goons so they're garbage people from the start.

Great example of intelligent people being stupid because of hubris and reductionism. They may understand LLMs but it's clear they know little about the pathology of cancer or our body.

Compared to a life spent working for Palantir, cigarettes probably taste pretty good.