CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday that the artificial intelligence industry is losing the battle for public perception.
“The culture is against these people and these products, and their supporters are being treated badly,” the “Mad Money” host said. He added: “Wall Street is losing the narrative battle, and stocks of all kinds could end up hurt.”
The change in sentiment comes at a difficult time for the market. Government bond yields continue to rise to multi-year highs, but S&P500 The constituent stocks are trading below their 200-day moving average, meaning they are trending lower, with 204 index constituents trading at least 20% below their 52-week high.
Given the already narrow market, Kramer worries that changing attitudes toward AI, which is Wall Street’s biggest growth driver, could put pressure on a key source of growth for the entire U.S. economy. Concerns about jobs, electricity costs and safety increasingly compete with industry promises of economic growth and increased productivity. This is a midterm election year, and the stakes are even higher as Democrats and Republicans compete for control of Congress.
“Eighteen months ago, people might have said these executives were putting tens of thousands of people to work building data centers,” Kramer said. “Now we think about how much they raised our electricity bills, how much water they plundered, how many towns they sacrificed.”
The industry’s message is only getting more complicated, as leading AI developers warn about the risks of increasingly powerful models. Kramer pointed to the leaked version. antropic The IPO prospectus, obtained by Reuters, included a warning that the company’s AI models pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,” the report said. he also mentioned OpenAI Citing safety concerns, we have decided to postpone the release of our next model, ChatGPT 6.1 Astra.
“I’m not a catastrophe person,” Kramer said. “You know I’m being constructive about AI, but companies have to start telling better stories.”
Kramer pointed out that meta As an example of how to change the narrative. He said he appreciates the company’s emphasis on efforts to limit the impact of data centers on local power costs and support the communities in which it invests. He also praised Meta’s new Muse AI agents, including a version designed to help small business owners automate administrative tasks. Cramer’s Charitable Trust, a portfolio managed by CNBC’s Investment Club, owns shares of Meta.
“Meta’s Muse may be the best new tool for scaling small businesses that I’ve heard about in recent years,” Cramer said.
Unless the industry does more to demonstrate the tangible benefits of AI, Kramer worries that deteriorating public sentiment could create another headwind for an already fragile market. “It didn’t have to happen this way,” he said. “But this is a new story, and it will be difficult to beat.”
