This statement that AI researchers are taking up smoking was made by Alexander Karp (CEO of Palantir), who just personally bought 37,000 acres of Swedish forest land, presumably in preparation for some form of AI-related geopolitical fallout. It was absolutely not a peer reviewed study or any sort of survey. It was likely something he heard in passing, a less-than-half-serious joke, or just a subjective questionable observation based on an N of a few. Regardless, this narrative was only picked up and amplified by media because he is the CEO of Palantir. He himself is a cigar smoker. Take that for what you will. I have seen no evidence that it is true -but if it were, I'd imagine there would be other indulgences, vices and financial/credit opportunities much more likely to be observed than smoking.
This is how gossip and urban legends and other myths have always spread. The difference is the size of the network and how much distance a myth can travel in a very short time.
Now, the entire world can share the same piece of gossip, and it takes on an entirely different quality when it is global instantly.
There is also a quote from Avi Schiffmann - founder of AI wearable friend. "By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that," Schiffmann says.
Both quotes may have been said in the sense of them not supporting this idea, but acknowledging an attitude of some of not worrying about long-term planning.
Is this material to the core thesis of this microblogpost?
> Many of his descriptions sound strikingly similar to the rhetoric coming out of places like Anthropic. For example, note the religious overtones of working at a corporation
Just browse a little bit on Twitter or this forum and you’ll have gobs of examples of religious fervor masquerading as techno-enlightenment
When a company publicly proclaims "omg, unchecked development will lead to AI destroying humanity!" (or similar), how brave/stupid would an employee have to be to go against the grain & *publicly* proclaim an opposing viewpoint?
Chances are their paycheck requires enough bravery/stupidity that few (if any) dare to deviate from company groupthink too much.
Employee accepts & lives by that long enough, and they might as well be part of a religious cult.
That religious angle could be just similarities in the psychology / group dynamics involved. Same mechanics -> same patterns observed.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
BTW in this case we happen to know one of the chains in the game of Chinese Whispers was the CTO of Palantir... this may or may not influence your beliefs
I also like to be explicit about whether we're talking about general trends, or one specific case. People often try to establish general trends by talking about one specific case.
I wish it were more often even generalizing from one case, that would be a big leap in epistemic hygiene compared to the more common generalizing from zero cases!
In all fairness, I wouldn't be surprised if the claims are true, given all the psychosis and cult-like behavior within all slop corps. It honestly feels like the Virgin Mary episode of South Park.
Not saying this is a good source and not just glorified marketing bullshit but it's a legitimately sourced thing that probably should be treated with more skepticism
I can't claim to know anything about the RAND corporation. Maybe they don't deserve to be included in this next sentence, maybe they do.
but there is something at least a little interesting about the notion that people working in the nuclear space they thought they might be saving the world - because in some sense, they... did?
I've always felt like the fact that no nukes have ever been dropped (in war) after 1945 was a pretty huge success story for the human race. We invented this insanely powerful weapon and, despite the typical pattern of humanity, we managed to solve one of our biggest "coordination problems" effectively enough to not use another one for 80 years (and counting).
I don't know that I'd extend this analogy to the AI labs, I'm not necessarily implying that they're all right about "saving the world," I just think it's worth noting that there was a contingent of people out there trying to save the world from a real threat and who seem to have - at least for now - succeeded.
While the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty [1] has not entered into force, it has created a world where nuclear testing has ended. There were almost 2,500 nuclear detonations between 1945 and 1998.[2] Since then, the only nuclear detonations have been North Korea's six tests.[3] This is one of humanity's most impressive achievements, and I really don't think it gets enough attention. There's an old video on Youtube that has an animated map of all the tests (except North Korea's): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY
> it has created a world where nuclear testing has ended
Or maybe not. China has been credibly accused of starting low-yield nuclear testing in 2020, specifically configured to evade detection, albeit unsuccessfully.
we're also a fresh eight months into there not being a nuclear arms treaty between the two largest nuclear powers for the first time in half a century so who knows what might happen
Nuclear war remains an ongoing threat, consider the list of countries with nuclear weapons:
- Russia
- United States
- China
- France
- United Kingdom
- India
- Pakistan
- Israel
- North Korea
There is no guarantee that the leadership of any of those countries will continue to heed the warnings of the research done during the cold war. There is no guarantee that all of those countries will remain politically stable for as long as their arsenals remain viable. There is no guarantee that all of those nations will stay out of major international conflicts that might suggest the use of a nuclear weapon on a non-nuclear power or the use of one in an attempt to defeat a conventional attack or to risk a so called limited exchange with another nuclear power.
We're still in the midst of a Mexican standoff, no one has discarded their weapons and the number of participants can always increase making it all the more dangerous.
> I've always felt like the fact that no nukes have ever been dropped (in war) after 1945 was a pretty huge success story ... We invented this insanely powerful weapon
Because we (the US) vastly overestimated the Soviet Union's nuclear program. A lot of it was for show to scare us (the US.)
The nuclear "armegeddon" was a very expensive thing to build, and part of what held it back was the shear cost: You can't drop a nuclear bomb that you never built because you couldn't afford it.
> I don't know that I'd extend this analogy to the AI labs
It's because:
1: The "danger" is just an overreaction.
2: The practical cost of building and running lots of datacenters will prevent building it.
I think it was also that logic of 'if we scare senators and thus everyone with the idea of their imminent mortality, this will guarantee massive funding for our military ventures'
You should read up on what this quote from the article is referring to
> From the Air Force intelligence estimates I was newly privy to, and the dark view of the Soviets, which my colleagues shared with the whole national security community, I couldn't believe that the world would long escape nuclear holocaust.
The "dark view" that the Soviets had of a nuclear war was essentially that
1. A limited nuclear exchange was impossible due to not being able to ascertain or trust the enemy's intentions and so all parties would use all of their nuclear arsenal to avoid losing the ability to counter attack to any subsequent attacks.
2. Even though they didn't see a nuclear war as being able to cause human extinction they concluded that no nation involved in one or near enough to suffer the second order effects of one would survive.
3. A full nuclear exchange would likely destroy >80% of each nation's industrial capacity resulting in the total collapse of industrial society making any reconstruction efforts impossible and leading to the death of the majority of the population dependent on industrial production for survival. The survivors would be on their own attempting to start over with subsistence agriculture made all the more difficult by however many years of nuclear winter resulted from the burning of cities and industry and suffering high cancer rates from exposure to fallout and toxic soot.
It doesn't really matter how many nuclear weapons you have beyond a certain number. Just imagine if you only hit all of the oil refineries in the US or you only destroyed all the major ports, it would still result in mass starvation and cripple the nation while creating a gigantic ecological disaster from burning huge quantities of oil and material. Multiply that across several nations and it's the end of the world as you know it.
"I remember what I thought when I held the single sheet with the graph on it. I thought, this piece of paper should not exist. It should never have existed. Not in America. Not anywhere, ever. It depicted evil beyond any human project that had ever existed. There should be nothing on Earth, nothing real, that it referred to."
More that we've almost killed ourselves with nukes several times, its mostly coincidences and individual bravery that have prevented the end of the human race.
This isn't as wild as it sounds; he's referring to the Anthropic Principle, and it's a valid way to look at it. We are having this conversation in this context because civilization is still intact.
Yes, statistics, the study of history, reflection on logical fallacies and other pesky worldly knowledge would not work, we need to, instead, account for multiverses.
This is a US centric view. You define success favorably to your argument. The world has not even been at peace since, with the sole nuclear weapon user being involved in a significant number of consequential wars after WWII. I guess you mean no conflict between great powers on a global scale, which I doubt anyone seriously considers stable and long lasting. But if there were total peace, 80 years wouldn't be such an outlier, given we've had long periods of peace before nuclear weapons as well. You might be right, or you might be wrong, but your reasoning isn't quite there yet.
That is part of the human victory, but there’s still more to be done to close the chapter fully. There is still on-going developments and testing even into the past decade that are publicly known (and more privately known to have leaked) that have follow on effects for all current and future living creatures of Earth. This chapter of humanity is unfortunately still active to the determinant of all.
The people who almost got us into nuclear wars, also saved us from nuclear wars. How kind of them. Curtis "Bombs Away" Lemay was one of the founders. You should learn more, it's very interesting, and important, yet somehow often overlooked.
Didn't we already mostly move to that system, and don't a lot of people already argue that it's true?
Most companies don't offer pensions anymore. Some companies don't even offer 401ks at all, and a significant portion of the ones that do don't do any employer contribution matching.
They have pensions in the US, it is called social security. But it is not self-sustainable and not good enough for medium-and-above income earners. It is basically a way to ensure seniors don't live in abject poverty.
What they moved away from was private pensions owned by your company. Now you own your private pension through the 401k thing they keep talking about. This IS a better and more sustainable system, but at the same time this was rolled out most companies also cut company-pensions but didn't give you more compensation that you can put on your 401k.
European companies are not forced to pay into your private pension either, it is usually part of union negotiations. Check how much basic pension pays out in Sweden (the almighty socialist country), last I checked it is ~900 euro per month. My parents in law make that much per month in retirement because they never put any money towards a private pension and never held a unionized job.
It's legal in some EU countries as well.
Companies outside collective bargaining agreements are under no obligation to provide you with any pension plan here.
> But it is not self-sustainable and not good enough for medium-and-above income earners.
It seems good enough for median earners. After taxes and health insurance, it's basically even.
Perhaps not self-sustainable you mean that unless something changes, it's not going to be able to keep paying out at current rates.
Well, I got news for you - that's what is happening for almost all government-run pension programs across the world on this model. Pay as you go does't work when you keep the same payment, and have 10x a higher ratio of recipients to payees.
This isn't unique to Social Security or the US. It's just a mathematical fact of the system.
You cannot have 99% of people contribute `x` and 1% of people receive `y`, and then switch that to 70% contribute and 30% receive, without either increasing `x` or reducing `y`.
You could have planned ahead for this long ago, and seen that the ratio was going to change and increased `x` over time accordingly or planned to reduce `y` over time accordingly. But we didn't, and mostly no one else has either.
Listen, I love a good chance to call the US undeveloped as much as the next ideologically motivated POS but the reason the US got off of pensions and onto 401ks is because of how many pension funds had serious issues with mismanagement and inability to provide payouts over the years. And this change happened during the arguable peak of the US public's support for regulatory solutions so it's not like they said "oh we can fix this we a few rules but we're not going to because reasons", they legitimately didn't think they could fix it. So far the 401ks and IRAs that replaced pensions have been decent. And as the other guy says, you can argue that Social Security is basically a public pension.
Not only are we not all in a race to the bottom, in European countries we've got full on gerontocracy (e.g. triple lock in UK or pensioners having larger income compared to median worker in France). You know, we could actually think about younger people and stop subsidising boomer luxury communism.
Am I the only one who think that we are overestimating the hindsight of "AI insiders" in comparison to the rest of the world?
It seems that they themselves are discovering the capabilities of models purely empirically by training them, and just have a few months head start before they release the model and everyone else can witness those same capabilities.
What do they have that make their multi-years (if not multi-decades) predictions more insightful than any other observer?
> This reminds me of the report that AI researchers have taken up smoking as a way to signal their belief that AI will cure cancer before smoking kills them.
While reading the first half of this sentence, I fully expected the second half to be "...to signal their belief that AI will destroy the world before they can get lung cancer"
I will not believe this until every frontier AI lab socializes a significant portion of their “profit” (subject to making a profit). I’m not talking about “Every kid with a Trump account gets a single share of SPCX”. I’m talking about “50+ percent of the shares are in a trust that distributes regular dividends to every US adult”. I’ll even be nice and allow those shares to be non-voting.
The info about the RAND corporation was engaging, but... since the post promised to connect it to "strikingly similar to the rhetoric coming out of places like Anthropic" ... I was surprised that it entirely lacked quotes from Anthropic, save one link to another blog post that was itself, IIUC, a joke.
> This reminds me of the report that AI researchers have taken up smoking as a way to signal their belief that AI will cure cancer before smoking kills them.
I give it 3 years at most, if the progress doesn't dramatically slow down.
I hope the policy measures Anthropic and OpenAI recommend in their research will be implemented in order to disperse the productivity gains enabled by AI widely, like they say.
I'm an optimist, but honestly, I think the dystopian future many pessimists expect is unlikely.
What would be the point for a few rich to concentrate even more wealth? Even if they were so selfish, surely it's worth spending some 20-30% on public benefits to prevent unrest, no?
The koolaid drinking coupled with the impotence or indifference in this place towards all those societal implications makes my head spin, sometimes. It’s just three years, but the AI Overlords have “policy recommendations” (this is PR, it’s marketing) for the proles, and what would even be the point? I mean, judging by the track record of billionaires who want to be trillionaires and who have no reason or personality trait left in them to care about anything but their immediate reality (cf. the reality they are inventing for the world)?
(Robots. Social unrest can be solved with robots.)
This is the next iteration of: but without consumers those billionaires have no one to sell stuff to. So surely this will work out.
If there is nothing like UBI to give access to the AI-driven world then won't the 'have nots' fracture into their own subeconomy where they have to work for each other in order to survive, thereby giving them jobs again?
>I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a lab like Anthropic announce they’re discontinuing all employer-sponsored retirement benefits.
Speculative rhetoric is no different from a mathematical fiction companies use to gamble on future revenue. The bubble will go eventually, as even boring bonds indicate skepticism at the risk dynamic.
Thankfully, once the IPOs run the cycle... we can hopefully get less AstroTurf from various cultists. =3
“Omg did you know that AI researchers are taking up smoking because they think AI will cure cancer??”
Oh really, which researchers?
“I don’t know.”
How many of them? One or many?
“I don’t know.”
What company do they work for?
“I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s Anthropic.”
How do you even know this?
“I saw it on someone’s TikTok.”
So if there are zero verifiable sources why do you believe this?
“Because it sounds fun, and confirms my biases. Now I’m going to forward this to a hundred other people or I’ll have bad luck.”
This is a meaningless example but this is true for so much more.
Has a single researcher come out and backed up this story?
> who just personally bought 37,000 acres of Swedish forest land, presumably in preparation for some form of AI-related geopolitical fallout
Ultra rich guy put some land in his investment portfolio. What a shocker!!
>CEO of Palantir bought 37,000 acres of Swedish forest land in preparation for some form of AI-related geopolitical fallout
is the kind of online discussion GP complains about
Now, the entire world can share the same piece of gossip, and it takes on an entirely different quality when it is global instantly.
That's also how politics has worked since (at least) 2015. Who needs evidence about outlandish claims when the vibes are right?
Anyway, me and my friends are going to go eat some cats and dogs.
You accidentally added 1, 2, and 5.
https://archive.is/avuUH
The article pointed to a quote from Palantir CTO.
There is also a quote from Avi Schiffmann - founder of AI wearable friend. "By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that," Schiffmann says.
Both quotes may have been said in the sense of them not supporting this idea, but acknowledging an attitude of some of not worrying about long-term planning.
> Many of his descriptions sound strikingly similar to the rhetoric coming out of places like Anthropic. For example, note the religious overtones of working at a corporation
Just browse a little bit on Twitter or this forum and you’ll have gobs of examples of religious fervor masquerading as techno-enlightenment
Chances are their paycheck requires enough bravery/stupidity that few (if any) dare to deviate from company groupthink too much.
Employee accepts & lives by that long enough, and they might as well be part of a religious cult.
That religious angle could be just similarities in the psychology / group dynamics involved. Same mechanics -> same patterns observed.
They claim AI researchers aren’t saving money in 401k because they believe there will be an AI utopia.
Which researchers? Can you name a few? Is there any proof of this trend?
Heck if anything AI researchers have bigger bank balances than all of us. They’ll be fine for the future no matter what.
BTW in this case we happen to know one of the chains in the game of Chinese Whispers was the CTO of Palantir... this may or may not influence your beliefs
Not saying this is a good source and not just glorified marketing bullshit but it's a legitimately sourced thing that probably should be treated with more skepticism
And the details are made up, but it is funny if we pretend it’s true.
but there is something at least a little interesting about the notion that people working in the nuclear space they thought they might be saving the world - because in some sense, they... did?
I've always felt like the fact that no nukes have ever been dropped (in war) after 1945 was a pretty huge success story for the human race. We invented this insanely powerful weapon and, despite the typical pattern of humanity, we managed to solve one of our biggest "coordination problems" effectively enough to not use another one for 80 years (and counting).
I don't know that I'd extend this analogy to the AI labs, I'm not necessarily implying that they're all right about "saving the world," I just think it's worth noting that there was a contingent of people out there trying to save the world from a real threat and who seem to have - at least for now - succeeded.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_...
Or maybe not. China has been credibly accused of starting low-yield nuclear testing in 2020, specifically configured to evade detection, albeit unsuccessfully.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2026-03/news/us-accuses-chin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/us/snplus/military/2026/02/04/...
- Russia
- United States
- China
- France
- United Kingdom
- India
- Pakistan
- Israel
- North Korea
There is no guarantee that the leadership of any of those countries will continue to heed the warnings of the research done during the cold war. There is no guarantee that all of those countries will remain politically stable for as long as their arsenals remain viable. There is no guarantee that all of those nations will stay out of major international conflicts that might suggest the use of a nuclear weapon on a non-nuclear power or the use of one in an attempt to defeat a conventional attack or to risk a so called limited exchange with another nuclear power.
We're still in the midst of a Mexican standoff, no one has discarded their weapons and the number of participants can always increase making it all the more dangerous.
Because we (the US) vastly overestimated the Soviet Union's nuclear program. A lot of it was for show to scare us (the US.)
The nuclear "armegeddon" was a very expensive thing to build, and part of what held it back was the shear cost: You can't drop a nuclear bomb that you never built because you couldn't afford it.
> I don't know that I'd extend this analogy to the AI labs
It's because:
1: The "danger" is just an overreaction.
2: The practical cost of building and running lots of datacenters will prevent building it.
see: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/how-pentagons-propa...
> From the Air Force intelligence estimates I was newly privy to, and the dark view of the Soviets, which my colleagues shared with the whole national security community, I couldn't believe that the world would long escape nuclear holocaust.
The "dark view" that the Soviets had of a nuclear war was essentially that
1. A limited nuclear exchange was impossible due to not being able to ascertain or trust the enemy's intentions and so all parties would use all of their nuclear arsenal to avoid losing the ability to counter attack to any subsequent attacks.
2. Even though they didn't see a nuclear war as being able to cause human extinction they concluded that no nation involved in one or near enough to suffer the second order effects of one would survive.
3. A full nuclear exchange would likely destroy >80% of each nation's industrial capacity resulting in the total collapse of industrial society making any reconstruction efforts impossible and leading to the death of the majority of the population dependent on industrial production for survival. The survivors would be on their own attempting to start over with subsistence agriculture made all the more difficult by however many years of nuclear winter resulted from the burning of cities and industry and suffering high cancer rates from exposure to fallout and toxic soot.
It doesn't really matter how many nuclear weapons you have beyond a certain number. Just imagine if you only hit all of the oil refineries in the US or you only destroyed all the major ports, it would still result in mass starvation and cripple the nation while creating a gigantic ecological disaster from burning huge quantities of oil and material. Multiply that across several nations and it's the end of the world as you know it.
https://apjjf.org/daniel-ellsberg/3222/article
"I remember what I thought when I held the single sheet with the graph on it. I thought, this piece of paper should not exist. It should never have existed. Not in America. Not anywhere, ever. It depicted evil beyond any human project that had ever existed. There should be nothing on Earth, nothing real, that it referred to."
Isn't this just survivorship bias?
Are you saying he's not accounting for the multi-verse where other worlds killed themselves and we just so happen to survive?
This is a US centric view. You define success favorably to your argument. The world has not even been at peace since, with the sole nuclear weapon user being involved in a significant number of consequential wars after WWII. I guess you mean no conflict between great powers on a global scale, which I doubt anyone seriously considers stable and long lasting. But if there were total peace, 80 years wouldn't be such an outlier, given we've had long periods of peace before nuclear weapons as well. You might be right, or you might be wrong, but your reasoning isn't quite there yet.
Most companies don't offer pensions anymore. Some companies don't even offer 401ks at all, and a significant portion of the ones that do don't do any employer contribution matching.
We’re not all in a race to the bottom.
What they moved away from was private pensions owned by your company. Now you own your private pension through the 401k thing they keep talking about. This IS a better and more sustainable system, but at the same time this was rolled out most companies also cut company-pensions but didn't give you more compensation that you can put on your 401k.
European companies are not forced to pay into your private pension either, it is usually part of union negotiations. Check how much basic pension pays out in Sweden (the almighty socialist country), last I checked it is ~900 euro per month. My parents in law make that much per month in retirement because they never put any money towards a private pension and never held a unionized job.
It seems good enough for median earners. After taxes and health insurance, it's basically even.
Perhaps not self-sustainable you mean that unless something changes, it's not going to be able to keep paying out at current rates.
Well, I got news for you - that's what is happening for almost all government-run pension programs across the world on this model. Pay as you go does't work when you keep the same payment, and have 10x a higher ratio of recipients to payees.
This isn't unique to Social Security or the US. It's just a mathematical fact of the system.
You cannot have 99% of people contribute `x` and 1% of people receive `y`, and then switch that to 70% contribute and 30% receive, without either increasing `x` or reducing `y`.
You could have planned ahead for this long ago, and seen that the ratio was going to change and increased `x` over time accordingly or planned to reduce `y` over time accordingly. But we didn't, and mostly no one else has either.
It seems that they themselves are discovering the capabilities of models purely empirically by training them, and just have a few months head start before they release the model and everyone else can witness those same capabilities.
What do they have that make their multi-years (if not multi-decades) predictions more insightful than any other observer?
While reading the first half of this sentence, I fully expected the second half to be "...to signal their belief that AI will destroy the world before they can get lung cancer"
Unlike being laid off because AI replaced your department, that's very dignified.
Until then it’s all talk.
Both options are converging. Which will win?
Seems like we're on a knifes edge, so light em if you got em.
https://coveringclimatenow.org/from-us-story/when-the-term-h...
I can't even.
Do people really think we will be working for another 20-30 years?
That seems very unlikely, and particularly so for software engineering.
I have no confidence anything will exist (UBI) to help those people survive.
I hope the policy measures Anthropic and OpenAI recommend in their research will be implemented in order to disperse the productivity gains enabled by AI widely, like they say.
I'm an optimist, but honestly, I think the dystopian future many pessimists expect is unlikely.
What would be the point for a few rich to concentrate even more wealth? Even if they were so selfish, surely it's worth spending some 20-30% on public benefits to prevent unrest, no?
(Robots. Social unrest can be solved with robots.)
This is the next iteration of: but without consumers those billionaires have no one to sell stuff to. So surely this will work out.
The answer, non of these filthy rich individuals making these claims actually believes it.
2. You are still fine in the highly unlikely event the arrival of this utopia is postponed or canceled.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-researchers-smoking-ai-cu...
Unless some bona fide "AI researchers" came forward and confirmed it, it never happened IMO.
Speculative rhetoric is no different from a mathematical fiction companies use to gamble on future revenue. The bubble will go eventually, as even boring bonds indicate skepticism at the risk dynamic.
Thankfully, once the IPOs run the cycle... we can hopefully get less AstroTurf from various cultists. =3