One signal

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says some AI researchers have taken up smoking to signal their belief that AI will eventually cure cancer. The claim is a striking glimpse of AI culture, but it is Sankar’s characterisation, not evidence that the behaviour is widespread.

In an interview with Face the Nation, as recounted by SFist, Sankar described belief in artificial general intelligence as a kind of faith and called the expectation of a cancer cure a “social delusion”. He did not provide evidence for how many researchers smoke for that reason.

Discuss: When does confidence in AI’s future become useful ambition, and when does it become a reason to discount present-day risks?

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