--- title: "Mark Cuban Says Yes, You Should Be Worried About AI Doomsday" description: "Stressed out about a potential AI-wrought apocalypse? Billionaire Mark Cuban says that's fair, actually. Cheers!" date: "2023-06-07" modified: "2023-06-07" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/mark-cuban-ai-doomsday" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai" - "apocalypse" - "mark cuban" - "the digest" --- # Mark Cuban Says Yes, You Should Be Worried About AI Doomsday ![Stressed out about a potential AI-wrought apocalypse? Billionaire Mark Cuban says that's fair, actually. Cheers!]() *\Image: Christian Petersen via Getty\* ## Shark Thoughts Stressed about an AI-wrought apocalypse? Look no further than one Mark Cuban, extremely rich investor of "Shark Tank" fame, to validate your [AI anxiety](). Asked [by *The New York Post*]() whether recent AI doomsday warnings from the likes of [OpenAI CEO Sam Altman]() and [since-defected OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk]() were too extreme, Cuban responded with what reads as a version of "nah." "It's not an overreach," Cuban told the *Post*. "It's a request for people to pay attention." "AI as it is today is not an existential threat," the billionaire added. "But in the future, say 15 to 20 years, there will be simulations of threat creation and responses for things we haven't even considered to this point." In other words, according to Cuban, folks like Altman and Musk are rightfully sounding the alarm — not necessarily about what's happening in the present, but about looming unknowns in our not-so-distant future. ## Case to be Made The guy's got a point. Existing AI presents serious concerns, the threat of mass-produced misinformation being a particularly pressing one. But at-scale misinformation, while obviously a bad and harmful thing, isn't necessarily threat-level doomsday. And importantly, something like [synthetic content-inflicted information scrambling]() is a fairly predictable outcome of this kind of tech. The existential dangers of AI systems, as Cuban notes, might really lie in their unpredictability. AI, after all, is still in many ways a [black box](). Most of the time, researchers don't *really* know what's going on inside a model's decision-making process, hence the reason why the [AI industry's most popular meme]() is of a horrifying and mysterious monster masked by a shiny little smiley face. It's impossible to soundly predict future behaviors of a system we don't fully understand — especially considering that we [might unknowingly be reinforcing]() some bad, black box-hidden behaviors. ## Century Club If it makes you feel any better, Cuban did add that he doesn't think anything too "sci-fi" would happen for another century or so. "It's not inconceivable that we will record everything we see, say, write and do in our lives, store it in an AI, effectively being a version of our own brains," Cuban, in true [billionaires-who-want-to-live-forever]() fashion, told the *Post*. "Combine that with the replication of ourselves and the AI can live on for us after we are gone. "Insane," he added, "but definitely on the 100-year knowledge curve of AI and precision biology that is beginning now." **More on AI doomsday:** *[OpenAI CEO Hopeful World Leaders Will Save Us From AI He's Building]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()