Confident AI will beat cancer, researchers are now smoking to prove a point
“By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that.”
Confident AI will beat cancer, researchers are now smoking. By Cybernews / Unsplash.
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- Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar claims some AI researchers smoke to signal belief AI will cure cancer, but cites no evidence.
- Sankar called the behavior a “social delusion” around AI, saying it shows excessive faith in the technology.
- Cancer includes more than 200 complex conditions, so AI cannot provide one simple cure.
- AI can support early detection, but smoking remains a proven cancer risk.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Some AI researchers are so sure the fast-evolving technology will eventually cure cancer that they’ve taken up a habit which is not really that popular anymore – smoking.
At least that’s what Palantir’s chief technology officer Shyam Sankar claims – although, of course, there’s no hard evidence for the alleged trend.
“So many researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI,” he said in an interview on a CBS show “Face the Nation.”
Sankar thinks this is nuts. To him, the example he himself gave relates to the “social delusion” surrounding AI.
“I’m showing you my chips are all in. So there is kind of this mass psychosis, social delusion around it,” Sankar added.
It’s proven that smoking causes cancer, and even though quite a few so-called AI visionaries have claimed AI will cure it, the technology cannot actually beat cancer on its own – because cancer is not a single disease.
We typically describe cancers based on the location within the body that they are found: breast, prostate, lung, brain, blood, pancreas. But they’re more than 200 different complex conditions driven by various genetic mutations.
Additionally, cancer outcomes depend on the biology of the disease, early detection, and the treatments available.
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AI can actually help with early detection – but there’s no single magic cure, and smoking to prove a point that’s basically unprovable doesn’t seem like a good idea. AI researchers are seemingly also true believers, though.
Fortune previously reported that Palantir has stocked vending machines in its Washington D.C. office with free nicotine pouches for its employees. And according to Business Insider, the so-called Cig Tech bros are also taking up smoking to help with networking.
By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that,Avi Schiffmann, the CEO of AI wearable startup Friend, said.
In 1966, more than 40% of American adults smoked, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2022, the rate had dropped to 11.6%. But then, the AI revolution began – so the numbers might change again.
