Businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban turned to Twitter to warn about robots’ threat to unemployment.
“Automation is going to cause unemployment and we need to prepare for it,” Cuban said Sunday. The tweet also included a link to warnings about artificial intelligence from tech leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking.
Cuban didn’t elaborate on the subject, but in a recent interview with CNBC he said President Donald Trump and his administration don’t understand technology advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Cuban is a strong critic of Trump and had endorsed his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during the presidential campaign.
“I’m willing to bet that these companies building new plants … this will lead to fewer people being employed,” said Cuban, adding that “people aren’t going to have jobs.”
“How does [Trump] deal with displaced workers?” he asked.
Cuban on Amazon
Cuban, who owns shares of Amazon and Netflix, said both tech giants are examples of how companies disrupt job growth.
“Amazon is the greatest start-up in the world,” by using technology to “be smart” and “disrupt retail,” the businessman said. Although Amazon announced last month it would add 100,000 new jobs across the country, it has been moving towards artificial intelligence and other technologies.
The company revealed Amazon Go last year, a supermarket without cashiers and checkouts. The company also revealed Amazon Prime Air, which promises to deliver packages with small drones minutes after placing an order. Amazon has started its drone delivery trial in Cambridge, UK.
Cuban’s comments come after Bill Gates said in an interview with Quartz last week that robots should get taxed just like humans. He said the tax system on automated labor should work like how it does with a person’s earnings when the government takes part of the wages to fund social programs.
Meanwhile, Musk warned about artificial intelligence at the World Government Summit 2017 in in the United Arab Emirates last week.
“There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. I want to be clear, these are not things I wish will happen; these are things I think probably will happen,” said the SpaceX CEO. “And if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, than we have to think about what are we going to do about it?”
Musk also said self-driving cars will be the norm within a decade.
A 2015 McKinsey report said 45 percent of jobs could be replaced with current technology. Meanwhile, Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane said in November 2015 that 80 million jobs in the U.S. and 15 million in the U.K. could be taken over by robots.
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