If Mark Cuban had to start a new business today, it would revolve around artificial intelligence, he has said.
The billionaire investor is confident that embracing AI is the key to success for any business going forward. Those that don’t move forward with the technology are likely to get left behind, just like companies that didn’t adapt to computers and the internet decades ago, Cuban recently told former U.S. senator Jeff Flake during a discussion at Arizona State University.
“There’s going to be two types of companies in this world: Those who are great at AI, and everybody else that they put out of business,” Cuban predicted at the event.
Cuban compared people who are wary of adopting AI tools in the workplace to those who were once afraid to embrace PCs and mobile devices.
That’s a sentiment he often heard as a computer and software salesman in the 1980s, he said. “People were terrified. They’re like, ‘If I can do all this typing [on a device], why do I need a secretary?'” Cuban said. “That sounds insane today.”
While many people have legitimate concerns about AI replacing human jobs, Cuban has argued that companies and workers who learn to adapt to these new technologies will have a clear “competitive advantage” over those who don’t.
“You don’t necessarily have to be great at AI to start a company, but at some point, you’re going to have to understand it,” Cuban said on a 2022 episode of “The Colin Cowherd Podcast.” “It’s just like the early days of PCs. You didn’t have to be good at PCs, but it helped. Then networks, then the internet, then mobile.”
Cuban’s latest comments echoed a talk he gave at the 2017 SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, when he asserted that the world’s first trillionaire would be an AI entrepreneur. He’s committed millions of dollars to the Mark Cuban Foundation’s Intro to AI Bootcamps program, which he founded in 2019 to teach young people about the tech for free.
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The bootcamps program aims to increase AI literacy among underserved high school students, at least partially in the name of maintaining global competitiveness. Cuban’s also noted that the world’s most valuable companies – like Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and, now, Nvidia – have all invested heavily in developing their AI businesses.
“The companies that have harnessed AI the best are the companies dominating,” Cuban wrote at the time. “It’s the foundation of how I invest in stocks these days.”
If you want to see an effective AI in action, Cuban said on the 2022 podcast, look no further than TikTok. The platform’s mastery of artificial intelligence is why so many users – including Cuban and his children – are hooked, he noted.
“The brilliance of TikTok – it’s all artificial intelligence,” Cuban said. “[It] uses AI to present the things you’re interested in.”
With an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion, according to Forbes, Cuban isn’t in need of extra cash — but, if he was, he says the always entrepreneurial billionaires says he’d turn to AI, Cuban told CNBC Make It last year. In his case, Cuban would start by learning to write prompts for AI language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Prompt engineering is already a popular new earning opportunity, with full-time workers in the field regularly earning six-figures, according to according to job board platform ZipRecruiter.
Cuban, who earned money as a kid selling garbage bags door-to-door, along with other side hustles hawking collectibles like stamps and baseball cards, said if he was a teen today he’d even learn AI skills with the goal of monetizing his knowledge by tutoring people and companies.
“I would go to businesses, particularly small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t understand AI yet,” Cuban said. “Doesn’t matter if I’m 16, I’d be teaching them as well.”
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