Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer, has claimed that AI researchers have become so confident that AI is about to cure cancer that they’ve started smoking cigarettes. Sankar made the claim during an interview with CBS News, where he was quizzed on the future of AI and the public’s concerns about it. Sankar waxed lyrical about the benefits of AI, going so far as to paint it as a religion to those working on it: “Every human has a god-shaped hole in their heart, and it’s important to understand that many of these folks in Silicon Valley who are building this technology have filled that hole with the machine God of AGI.” Then he explained that belief in near-future AI breakthroughs in cancer research means smoking is on the up amongst those working on it: “So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI.” “Every human has a god-shaped hole in their heart” The interviewer, Margaret Brennan, interrupted him to exclaim, “What? That makes no sense.” Sankar responded: I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I will—I’m showing you my chips are all in. So there is kind of this mass psychosis, social delusion around it.” "So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI," Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar said. https://t.co/hipQ05qMvK— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) October 12, 2026 Sankar’s claim is backed up by comments from Avi Schiffmann, founder of the AI wearable startup Friend, who told Business Insider that some AI researchers have concluded that even if they develop lung cancer, “our AI robots are supposed to have cured that” by the time it becomes a problem. However, before you grab a pack of smokes and start happily puffing away, note that medical scientists remain skeptical that a cure for cancer is right around the corner. In an interview with IFL Science, Professor Florian Markowetz, Professor of Computational Oncology at the University of Cambridge and Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, was asked directly if AI is going to find a cure for cancer and said: “The first part is, will there ever be a cure for cancer? And I think the answer very likely is already no at that stage. And that is not because we’re not making progress in treating cancer, in managing cancer, but cancer is such a complex disease, which appears in all parts of the body with many different fundamental mechanisms leading to it. The idea that we can just completely get rid of it is, I think, very, very unlikely.” But he did add that cancer treatment is likely to improve: “We will find better drugs. We will make sure people can live longer, [that] they have healthier lives. We can spot cancers earlier. We will make progress in all kinds of ways, but I don’t think it will ever go away.” Prof. Markowetz also noted that AI is likely to improve early detection of cancers through imaging, which would improve survival rates, but a full-on “cure” is not currently likely. Sankar went on to claim that the technology industry has the burden of showing “very clearly to the American people that- that AI is going to result in economic prosperity and security for the nation.” Sankar was actually present at the recent White House meeting between Donald Trump and various tech leaders about the future of AI and the need to impose “guardrails” on the technology. He described the meeting as being about how, “American people expect AI to generate economic prosperity and to do so securely, and that we as companies have an affirmative obligation to deliver on exactly those things.” With some AI researchers saying it’s going to usher in paradise and some ominously saying it’s going to kill us all, the future looks, shall we say, uncertain.