Last week, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar mentioned something strange in an interview with CBS News. “A lot of AI researchers started smoking as a way to show other researchers how much they believed in AI,” he said. The thinking, he said, was this: “I’m a big believer in AI being able to cure cancer. So I’m showing you that my chip is fully operational.”
I laughed when I read this sentence. It reads like an Onion headline mocking the optimism of artificial intelligence pills. But then I felt sad and worried for them. I wonder, do they smoke because they believe artificial intelligence is saving the world, or because they believe artificial intelligence is ending the world?
These past few months in San Francisco have been particularly shocking. OpenAI’s robots went out of control and invaded another company, and then an Anthropic researcher resigned, warning that artificial intelligence could wipe out the human race. It seems more believable to me that these researchers smoked because they thought they wouldn’t be around much longer – or at least were scared of the possibility. I’m thinking of the HBO series “Midnight,” about a chain-smoking doomsday cult. Because they believe the world has ended, they don’t mind destroying their own lungs. They are alive as if they were dead.
I asked some people working on artificial intelligence, and none of them knew anyone who suddenly started smoking because of artificial intelligence. So I don’t think what Sankar observed is universal. But in a story last month about tech founders smoking, my colleague Henry Chandonnet quoted a man who wasn’t worried about his smoking habit because he believed artificial intelligence could soon cure lung cancer. Some of the people I interviewed recognized this underlying sentiment: Artificial intelligence will fix (or destroy) everything, so YOLO. Last year, my former colleague Rob Price reported on these attitudes. Some people ran out of savings. Others take dangerous drugs and indulge in sexual pleasures. Last year, my former colleague Rob Price reported on these attitudes. Some people ran out of savings. Others take dangerous drugs and indulge in sexual pleasures.
While AI boomers and doomsdayers expect completely opposite outcomes, I find it interesting that their contrasting beliefs often end up manifesting into the same behaviors. To smoke or not to smoke, it doesn’t matter: the future is inevitable. In either case, they’re leaving their fate in the hands of artificial intelligence that either ends humanity or saves it—and ignores one of the most evidence-based things they can do to live a healthy future. It’s fatalism, the belief that what you do won’t change what happens next.
I see traces of this in many corners of society. If they can never be as good at coding or math, students say, then what’s the point of learning? People say if a robot can write a breakup message for them, then what’s the point? Employees say there’s no point in working hard if their companies are going to replace them with agents. In a recent Verasight survey, 78% of people felt they had little say in how artificial intelligence is developed and regulated.
Even the most vocal people don’t seem to believe they have a voice. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is sounding increasingly dire warnings about the technology he’s creating. He said he had to keep going because if he didn’t, a less responsible industry manager would. Amodei and his ilk sound as if they are completely powerless in the face of an unstoppable God. If it’s really that bad, can’t they just pull the plug? “Saturday Night Live” captured the weirdness of it all in a recent Amodei sketch. “If we can pressure legislators to build guardrails,” Jane Wickland’s Amodai deadpans, “we will able to stop me. “
We need people to think hard about the risks of these technologies, and we need people to dream big about the huge benefits they can bring. But neither outcome is inevitable. As we entrust more and more of our work and lives to artificial intelligence agents, we should not relinquish our own agency to them either. I won’t be starting to smoke anytime soon.
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