Palantir’s CTO claims AI researchers are smoking to prove they believe AI will cure cancer, and he says it’s a sign of tech-fueled ‘mass psychosis’
Source: Fortune ·
Sankar attacked AI doomers in a recent interview.
From the source
Some researchers are so confident AI will cure cancer that they’ve taken up a new habit—smoking. At least, that’s according to Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, who cited no evidence for the claim but pointed to the example as he spoke of the “mass psychosis” that, in his opinion, has gripped Silicon Valley as companies race to create artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a computer that can think and reason as well as or better than a human. “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 CBS’ “Face the Nation.” While seemingly far-fetched, Sankar said the example 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,” he said. While it’s unclear how many researchers are actually smoking cigarettes to project some kind of confidence in the potential of AI to cure cancer,…