Mark Cuban: AI Proficiency Key to 750,000 New Roles

US companies have referenced artificial intelligence in job cuts this year at a rate more than double that of the entire previous year. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, however, contends that employees are focusing on the wrong danger.

Cuban redirects attention from the technology itself toward the individuals who leverage it. Fresh hiring data and a Gallup poll indicate that this reframing matters for who gets hired and who gets laid off.

Cuban Warns Job Risk Tied to AI Skills

Data backs the anxiety. US employers attributed 120,136 announced job cuts through September to AI, roughly 21% of all reductions, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Cuban sees the menace from a different angle, arguing that the real peril comes from other people.

“AI won’t take your job. Someone who knows how to use AI better than you, will take your job,” he said.

Survey findings support his view. Gallup found that tech workers who used AI less than once a month faced three times the layoff risk of those who used it monthly.

Overall, 62% of laid-off workers used AI annually or less, versus 50% of employed workers. Yet only 1% of those laid off named AI as the primary cause.

Data Annotators Top 750,000 AI Hiring Wave

Even though AI leads as the reason for US layoffs this year, it is also generating jobs. The Kobeissi Letter, citing Wall Street Journal data, reported that AI-linked positions have added over 750,000 US jobs since 2023.

The figures come from LinkedIn estimates. Demand also appears in job ads: AI postings on LinkedIn rose 156% between 2024 and 2025.

Data annotators—workers who label content for training AI models—top the list with 282,000 roles. Data center jobs follow at 117,000, and AI engineers account for 105,000.

“AI-related positions also offer significantly higher pay, with a median salary of ~$180,000 on LinkedIn, compared to $80,000 across all jobs,” the post added.

Box CEO Aaron Levie expects that demand to spread well beyond the tech sector.

“Every bank, life sciences company, manufacturer, and even law firm is bringing on more technical talent -or repositioning existing roles- to help with agent deployment in their companies,” he wrote.

Banks are also hiring for AI skills. Job postings that mention agent orchestration jumped 1,721% this year, according to hiring data firm Draup.

Still, overall hiring remains slow. Nonfarm payrolls rose 29,000 in September, and the unemployment rate reached 4.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.

The BLS releases its October jobs report on November 6. That data may show whether AI-linked hiring keeps growing while overall job gains stay slow.