The old Shark tank star I asked X to answer to one viral clip of the All inclusive podcast, in which investors Jason Calacanis And Chamath Palihapitiya revealed the real expenses of deploying AI agents to improve productivity: in some cases, AI agents cost more than $300 per day, or more than $100,000 per year. For Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital, the award has forced him to rethink the budget he’s willing to give to top developers, warning that otherwise, “I’ll run out of money.”
For Cuban, this reality is the “smartest counterweight” he has seen so far to predictions that AI would replace large numbers of workers – at least in the short term.
Even if the technology is successful, he said, companies still need to prove that the economics make sense, and he’s not convinced the high price tag outweighs the value humans continue to provide.
“Humans have a much greater capacity to know the results of their actions,” Cuban says. said. “Agents, just like LLMs, never do this.”
AI agents still don’t know what happens after ‘cup’ falls from high chair, says Cuban
AI systems still lack real-world judgment, making replacing workers risky, Cuban added. He cited a simple example: An 18-month-old child who pushes a sippy cup from a high chair quickly learns the consequences of his parents’ reaction. AI, on the other hand, lacks awareness.
“The officers can tell you the cup is going to fall,” Cuban said. “But they have no idea of the context and what’s going to happen next.”
Technology also lacks consistency, often being “spaced out” and unable to recognize why and when errors occur, he said – a skill level comparable to that of technology. the youngest talent of generation Z.
“Agents are still like college interns who get hungover, make mistakes and don’t take responsibility for them,” he added.
Overall, Cuba’s argument suggests that the biggest obstacle to replacing workers with AI may not be the technology itself, but rather whether companies can trust it to work consistently at a logical price.
Cuban refused to give further details after Fortune asked for comment.
Predictions of mass layoffs due to AI have yet to materialize
Despite AI’s current flaws, business leaders continue to warn that rapid technological advancements could soon reshape the workforce.
Dario AmodeiCEO of Anthropic, has warned that AI could disrupt half of entry-level jobs within one to five years. More recently, he suggested the technology could become capable of performing most, if not all, tasks in “well under five years.”
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman echoed similar concerns. He said this week that the world may be just “a few years” away from the kind of superintelligence that could replace CEOs, including himself.
However, so far, large-scale layoffs due to AI have yet to materialize. Analysts at Oxford Economics said companies “do not appear to be replacing workers with AI on a large scale.” Instead, companies might exaggerate The role of AI in workforce reductions—a phenomenon described as “AI washing.”
“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people blame AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s a real displacement by AI of different types of jobs,” Altman said at the India AI Impact Summit on Thursday.
He says companies still need to weigh factors beyond simple productivity metrics to determine how far to push automation.
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