OK the headline was a bit deceptive; he’s just buying shares and talking about it publicly is apparently enough to make Twitter’s stock jump more than 3 percent. He said he bought “a couple million.”
The billionaire basketball fan traded his office Stairmaster for a seat at CNBC on Tuesday to chat about the economic opportunities brought forth by artificial intelligence, which he says will be the sort of thing that smart, large companies deploy to increase revenue without having to hire as many workers.
“In terms of the market, particularly larger companies, you’re gonna see dramatically improved productivity, you’re going to see hopefully revenues go up, but the number of employees to support those revenues go down significantly. I think that’s going to increase earnings. So companies that are geared toward artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, I’ve been buying. My biggest holdings are Amazon, who I think is the leader in this space, Netflix for video. And I’ve started buying Twitter just recently because I finally think they got their act together with artificial intelligence.
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The key to artificial intelligence is data, and Twitter hadn’t been able to harvest the data to be smarter in how they deliver tweets and how they use information and how they deliver ads. Now they’ve started to hire the right people, they’re starting to get smarter, you see that in the results you get. Rather than they just be chronological, you’re seeing things that really are relevant that make a difference.”
In addition to the tweet delivery shifts, the company has been using algorithms to help identify harassment on the site. The verdict is out on how effective that’s been. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, has said he believes AI will be “additive” and “positive,” adding that “it gives time back to people to focus on pursuits that are creative and important.” He himself sunk $7 million into the company in February, after a lousy quarter sent the company’s stocks sailing down 10 percent. It’s trending up since announcing a video service with Bloomberg. And now, Cuban to the rescue!
