Mark Cuban advises AI companies to spend billions of dollars on people directly affected by AI.
The billionaire former “Shark Tank” investor wrote in a post on X on Thursday that AI companies need to start putting money “in support of towns and cities that may be affected by job losses.”
He said companies must start courting the public because they are losing the PR battle with them.
“Billions of dollars is a lot of money for all of the town and city programs. For all of the major LLMs, it’s the cost of doing business,” Cuban said.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that being hated is bad for business,” he said, adding that the big AI companies “are all bad at putting people first.”
Cuban talked about another group that is being heavily impacted by AI: creatives. He said all the creators he knows fear what AI will bring to their professions, and that companies need to visit artists in Los Angeles and New York to talk about providing financial and creative support to attract them.
“You have to meet them face-to-face and basically do what they say,” he wrote. On the other hand, he said it was a “stupid” idea for AI companies to pay celebrities to endorse their work.
“Given the number of data centers and power needed now and in the future, we will fall far short of the capacity we need to make our businesses work without kissing the butts of people who go to work every day and are just trying to pay their bills,” Cuban wrote in X.
Cuban’s post comes amid a surge in AI-related job losses this year. At least 16 US companies, including Snap, Cisco, and Coinbase, have announced layoffs due to AI-related job cuts.
There was also backlash at university graduation ceremonies, where speakers were booed when they mentioned AI.