Confidence in AI cancer cure has Silicon Valley smoking again, tech exec says | Latest Tech News
Smoke ’em if you bought ’em?
Palantir’s Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar revealed in a latest interview with CBS that AI staff are bizarrely taking up smoking to show how a lot they trust in the tech to save them from the hazards of lighting up.
“So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” Sankar said, main the interviewer to reply that it “makes no sense.”
Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer of Palantir Technologies, speaks during the launch of America.gov in Washington, DC, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. Bloomberg via Getty Images
A blonde girl smokes a cigarette on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025. Getty Images
“’I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in,’” he explained, calling it a type of “mass psychosis” and “social delusion.”
The tech exec claimed people have a “God-shaped hole” in their hearts, and for Silicon Valley staff, AI has develop into that “God.”
The odd remarks come amid fierce debate over the future of the technology after an worker at AI giant Anthropic not too long ago made stark warnings that AI may kill all people, sparking industrywide chaos.
A lady lights a cigarette over an ashtray on a desk, Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. Getty Images
“There is a substantial probability that this technology could kill everyone,” Jacob Coxon told NBC News after resigning from the AI giant last month.
“This isn’t hyperbole,” he said. “It’s not a marketing stunt.”
Coxon’s feedback have spurred a quantity of AI figureheads to call for a slowing of AI’s development, though the federal Trump administration has dismissed the concerns as a “hoax.”
Many staff have purchased into the thought of AI as so highly effective it could cure cancer. ZUMAPRESS.com
Much of the administration’s views of AI have been influenced by the other facet of the talk, so-called “effective accelerationism,” a philosophy surrounding AI that believes the technology has so a lot benefit for humanity that any slowing of it should do hurt.
That contains the technology’s advantages for health care, with researchers starting to use AI to help prescribe mental health medication, give medical advice or even probably cure cancer.
In August, Moderna and Merck announced a “landmark moment” in the testing of a vaccine for melanoma, the deadliest type of pores and skin cancer.
The trial happened on 1,100 sufferers and was only attainable thanks to AI, which analyzed a piece of each affected person’s tumor to create a extremely personalised model of the vaccine.
AI’s benefit comes in its means to analyze huge sums of data — a long time of opinions, case research, research and testing outcomes.
“It allows us to consider the possibilities across all drugs and all diseases,” explained Dr. David Fajgenbaum, who co-founded an AI pushed non-profit called Every treatment as properly as Castleman Disease Collaborative Network.
“We utilize the world’s knowledge, rather than relying only on what is in our brains.”
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