Mark Cuban Just Made a Bold Prediction About the Future of AI and Human Interaction

Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur, basketball team owner, pharmaceutical-industry-upsetter, and former regular on the iconic Shark Tank reality TV investment show, knows a thing or two about innovation. And yesterday, he took to Bluesky to make this bold prediction about AI: Within the next 3 years, there will be so much AI, in particular AI video, people won’t know if what they see or hear is real. Which will lead to an explosion of f2f engagement, events and jobs. Those that were in the office will be in the field. Call it the Milli Vanilli effect It’s worth taking notice. Cuban’s effectively saying we’ve reached the end of the complex “will AI steal my job?” debate. And the answer is yes, more or less. At the very least, Cuban painted a bold picture about how AI is going to transform society in the next 36 months or so, and that picture includes a dramatic change in where new jobs will be created. His argument is simple. There is going to be so much AI and it will advance so much, he thinks, that we just won’t be able to resist it. The content that AI systems will generate will also be so convincing, or so useful, that people may more or less give up trying to tell if something is real or not. So society will fall back to relying on genuine face-to-face (f2f, as Cuban abbreviates it) human connections for fun and work—something that AI just can’t replace. Milli Vanilli, in case you don’t know, was a successful German R&B duo from the 1980s and ‘90s, selling some 30 million singles internationally. But their fans were shocked when the band’s manager revealed the two singers, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, were just lip synching and didn’t actually perform any of the vocals on their hugely popular tracks. Their performance had been so convincing that they won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in February 1990. (It was subsequently revoked.) By invoking this musical scandal, Cuban suggests he thinks AI is going to do the same thing—act convincingly like the real thing, while actually being artificial—but pretty much everywhere. This is going to upset many traditional models for how we live our lives, including how we work. His “those that were in the office will be in the field” line is particularly eye-opening. This seems to be a prediction that the traditional office job will be more or less dead. That’s one in the eye for all the micromanaging demonstrated by company leaders enforcing strict “return to office” rules right now. Instead, Cuban imagines that AI will be so convincing that people won’t rely on phone calls, texts, emails or even video calls to complete their jobs—and they’ll have to be out and about, traveling, actually meeting clients, customers, contractors, and co-workers in person. In Cuban’s mind, this transformation will create a whole host of new jobs. Picture it as a 21st-century equivalent of the arrival of the desktop PC in the workplace—a revolutionary device that abolished the old-fashioned typing pool, and later even many secretarial posts. But it also created a whole new slew of jobs, from programmers to Excel experts to the engineers in company IT departments. Some commenters replying to Cuban’s post agree. “You’re absolutely right. The digital will become unreliable. We’ll have to get back together in person,” wrote one. Another noted that they already “tell up and coming musicians, performers, actors this all the time. become exceptional—because exceptional, authentic experiences and connections will be more valuable than ever.” But other commenters struck a more skeptical note, pointing out that “AI is scary, but I think if companies start replacing people, riots are going to happen and it won’t happen,” or even suggesting “A bill making any artificial account posing as a human being (bots) illegal is desperately needed, like yesterday.” Why should you care about this? For one reason: Cuban’s optimism stands out among much of the much bleaker forecasting about AI’s impact on the world. For example, an MIT professor recently issued a stern warning that we can stop AI from stealing everyone’s job—but only if we act really fast, to prevent AI from steamrolling over everything. If you can bring some of Cuban’s optimism into your workplace, that might lift worker’s worries about AI. Meanwhile you should take note of his warning and really plan for some serious re-skilling or up-skilling of your workforce to get them ready for the face-to-face future he predicts. Then you might be better placed to benefit from the AI revolution. BY KIT EATON @KITEATON