Billionaire Mark Cuban has ideas for how the companies behind massive data centers can win public support as communities and local governments push back more forcefully against planned build-outs. <\/p>\n
“It’s time for everyone to realize that the fight against data centers has nothing to do with data centers,” Cuban began in a lengthy X post<\/a> on Thursday. “They have become a proxy for the hate towards AI and the concentration and accumulation of wealth it’s creating.” <\/p>\n Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur and minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, argued that winning the PR battle will require “putting people first.” The companies behind large language models should visit cities across the country, connecting and talking with artists, writers, creators, and their unions to ask how to help protect their work and offer financial support. <\/p>\n “DO NOT GO TO THE MUSIC OR FILM COMPANIES,” he wrote. “That will make it worse.” <\/p>\n “Don’t try to pay famous people to endorse what you are doing. That’s dumb,” he added. <\/p>\n Cuban himself is an AI enthusiast and sees immense promise for both businesses and people. On the business front, he famously declared that AI will distill companies into two camps: “those who are great at AI, and everybody else” <\/p>\n But he has also acknowledged the risk the technology poses to jobs, in particular entry-level white-collar roles, customer service, software development, and data analysis. <\/p>\n He said it’s too late to simply explain the benefits of AI. The tech companies need to offer direct help to towns and cities that may be impacted by job losses, which he believes will ultimately become net gains. <\/p>\n “Billions of dollars is a lot of money across towns and city programs,” he wrote. “Across the major LLMs, it’s a cost of doing business.” <\/p>\n He ended the missive with a nod toward working people. <\/p>\n “Given the number of data centers and power that is needed, today and going forward , If you don’t kiss the asses of the people that go to work every day, and are just trying to pay their bills, you will fall far far short of the capacity you need to make your business work.” <\/p>\n Molly Moorhead is a senior editor at Yahoo Finance. <\/p>\n Click here for the latest technology news that will impact the stock market<\/a> <\/p>\n