Confidence in AI cancer cure has Silicon Valley smoking again, tech exec says

Smoke ’em if you got ’em?

Palantir’s Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar revealed in a recent interview with CBS that AI workers are bizarrely taking up smoking to prove how much 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 stated, leading the interviewer to respond that it “makes no sense.”

“’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 form of “mass psychosis” and “social delusion.”

The tech exec claimed people have a “God-shaped hole” in their hearts, and for Silicon Valley workers, AI has become that “God.”

The odd remarks come amid fierce debate over the future of the technology after an employee at AI giant Anthropic recently made stark warnings that AI could kill all humans, sparking industrywide chaos.

“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 comments have spurred a number of AI figureheads to call for a slowing of AI’s development, though the federal Trump administration has dismissed the worries as a “hoax.”

Much of the administration’s views of AI have been influenced by the other side of the debate, so-called “effective accelerationism,” a philosophy surrounding AI that believes the technology has so much benefit for humanity that any slowing of it will do harm.

That includes the technology’s benefits for health care, with researchers beginning to use AI to help prescribe mental health drugs, give medical advice or even potentially cure cancer.

In August, Moderna and Merck announced a “landmark moment” in the testing of a vaccine for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

The trial took place on 1,100 patients and was only possible thanks to AI, which analyzed a piece of each patient’s tumor to create a highly personalized version of the vaccine.

AI’s advantage comes in its ability to analyze vast sums of data — decades of opinions, case studies, research and testing results.

“It allows us to consider the possibilities across all drugs and all diseases,” explained Dr. David Fajgenbaum, who co-founded an AI driven non-profit called Every Cure as well 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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