A hot potato: Debate over the dangers of uncontrolled AI and the threat it poses to humanity has reached a pinnacle in the last few weeks. Joining the argument with his own take is tech billionaire and ex-Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban, who believes people's response to social-media-amplified anti-AI sentiment is more of a threat than rogue agents.
Cuban gave his views on the AI apocalypse situation in a series of X posts. "I think there is far greater risk from what humans do in response to what they see on social media, than what agent swarms will do," he wrote.
– Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 15, 2026
A lot of what Cuban says focuses on social media algorithms allegedly "amplifying the anti AI sentiment far beyond any positive AI sentiment." He adds that the irony is Meta and Google are going to be trying to make enough money from pushing people to hate AI to subsidize their AI (I.e., the cost of hardware and infrastructure).
In Cuban's opinion, the ultimate irony is that for all the power of their AI models, frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic aren't powerful enough "to reverse engineer the social media algorithms and push content viral for their own AI agenda."
The recent AI security incidents and subsequent warnings from Anthropic researchers about the dangers the technology poses to humanity led to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling for a slowdown in AI development – something both Sam Altman and Elon Musk supported.
– Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 15, 2026
Much of the counterargument to slowing down development has been that rival nations, especially China, will continue their AI advancements and gain an advantage.
Cuban said he isn't calling for development to stop – he doesn't even think such a thing is possible.
Blaming social media for anti-AI feelings isn't new. Both OpenAI and X have claimed China ran covert campaigns designed to turn Americans against data centers. They had little impact, though, mostly because a lot of "claims" made in the posts were actually true.
President Trump is heavily against any AI slowdown or talk of its destructive powers. He recently described concerns of an apocalypse as a "hoax." He also alleged that the countrywide protests against AI data centers are part of a "sick conspiracy" against American companies by people who don't want the US to succeed.
Unsurprisingly, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang agrees. The CEO spoke with Trump while onstage for the All-In Podcast, telling the president, "There's a lot of complexity and the fact of the matter is you saw through all of that, and we're all just really grateful."
Given Amodei's warning about AI botnet swarms taking over the internet within a year, and an Anthropic employee putting the chances of AI killing all humans within the next decade at more than 10%, it's hard to imagine that many people agree with Cuban's opinion.
Mark Cuban says "social media" AI backlash poses a bigger threat than the technology itself
