Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is fired up about artificial intelligence, and he doesn’t understand why everyone else isn’t.
Cuban was direct in a post that summed up his whole attitude: “If you aren’t excited about AI and playing with every tool and learning all you can about it, you need to go back to your IBM PC.”
He made the comment in response to a post from Anthony Pompliano, founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management, who argued that AI is one of the strongest deflationary forces we’ll see in our lifetime.
In a series of posts on X, Cuban further explained that AI isn’t just the next big thing. It’s the thing.
“Generative AI will be the greatest growth and productivity engine, ever,” he wrote. “We will see amazing new shit that replaces the old shit, but will cost more and we will bust ass to get it.”
Cuban believes that AI won’t bring prices down in the short term. Instead, it’s going to result in a wave of new digital and physical products people never knew they needed — and they’ll gladly pay top dollar to get them. Entrepreneurs will be at the heart of this shift, launching businesses based on AI-generated ideas that compete with each other and disrupt industries.
“There will be two types of companies,” Cuban said. “Native AI companies that are great at it and those who are on their way out of business.”
Capital Will Follow Innovation, Not Cheapness
Some argued that AI will drive deflation by making existing products cheaper. Cuban pushed back hard on that idea. “No. That’s not where people will focus capital,” he replied. “It’s why the USA leads in tech but trails in manufacturing. We are smart and invest in the businesses with the most upside, derived from intellectual capital. And now AI.”
He added, “To make cheaper T-shirts, you have to invest in robots and AI. Would you rather put your money there or in some new shit that could make you trillions?”
AI Will Create More Jobs, Not Fewer
While it seems that most people believe AI will result in widespread job losses, Cuban sees the opposite happening. He believes that AI won’t wipe out jobs—it will actually create more. The reason is that human brains still process real-world information in ways AI can’t match.
“The living, breathing world contains information that the computers in our brain can inherently capture, evaluate and process better than AI for now and for a long time to come,” he said.
He pointed out that even his dog can cross the street safely, adjusting for changes in the environment—something AI systems like Full Self-Driving still struggle with. “It’s going to be hard for AI to capture as much information as we can, in real time, and learn from it in real time, like humans and even dogs can.”
Data, IP and the Race to Build the Best Models
Cuban sees a future where companies guard their intellectual property and build their own proprietary models. Hospitals like the Mayo Clinic and MD Anderson, he said, will likely develop their own AI trained on private, exclusive data.
“Models that have the most users that are willing to let the model learn from the interactions will be ahead of the game. OpenAI having 400m users matters,” he said.
Humans Still Choose—For Now
In one of his more philosophical takes, Cuban summarized the shift this way: “For the entire history of humanity, innovation has been limited to the imagination, time and skill of humans. No longer.”
But humans still get to decide what they want, how they want it, and what they’re willing to pay. The real turning point, he says, will come “when there are people who are willing to relinquish that part of their lives to AI.”
IMAGE CREDIT: “Mark Cuban” by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Image adjusted for layout.