The doom-and-gloom narrative around AI is spreading across Wall Street. Hardly a day passes without fresh warnings that automation could reshape the labor market and threaten millions of white-collar jobs.
But billionaire Mark Cuban isn’t fully buying the panic.
In a recent post on X, Cuban said the “smartest” counter to the AI job takeover story is the economics of feasibility. His question is simple: If running AI agents costs more than paying human workers and the productivity gains are modest, would companies still rush into full automation?
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Cuban shared his comments along with a video clip, where entrepreneur Jason Calacanis said AI agents are already costing him about $300 a day per agent in API token costs while handling only 10% to 20% of the work.
Cuban says the real advantage humans have over AI is foresight. Humans can think ahead and consider the consequences of their actions, something he believes AI agents “never” do.
“Even an 18 month old will learn what happens when they push the sippy cup off their high chair,” Cuban wrote on X. “Mom gets upset. Comes and has to clean up. They figure it out quickly. Agents can tell you the sippy cup will fall. But they have no idea of the context and what will happen next.”
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The inconsistency of AI is another challenge Cuban believes could slow the mass automation of company workflows. He says AI execution paths can vary, and there is no guarantee the technology will perform the same task the same way every time. Cuban refers to this AI consistency problem as agents that “space out.”
“To make matters worse, they can’t tell you they have ‘spaced out’, why and when,” he said. “Agents are still like college interns that come in hungover, make mistakes and don’t take responsibility for them.”
Despite the edge Cuban mentioned, he has been clear on one point: ignoring AI is not an option. He believes companies and individuals that fail to implement the technology will be left behind. The billionaire has repeatedly urged college graduates and young workers to learn how to implement AI for small businesses because he believes it will be one of the most valuable skills in the job market.
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“There are millions of companies that have 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 people that aren’t going to have AI budgets, aren’t going to have AI experts,” Cuban said in an August interview with tech podcast TBPN. “This is where kids getting hired coming out of college are really going to have a unique opportunity.”
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This article Everyone Is Freaking Out About AI Taking Jobs, But Mark Cuban Says Humans Still Win Because of This One Key Advantage originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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