A hot potato: There have been a lot of wild promises about what AI will accomplish – most of which have yet to happen. According to billionaire investor Mark Cuban, the technology will create the world's first trillionaire. And it won't be someone who's already rich: Cuban believes the first person to make $1,000,000,000,000 will be "just one dude in the basement."
Cuban, who has an estimated fortune of around $5.7 billion, was extolling the virtues of AI on a recent episode of the High Performance podcast.
He said that generative AI was in its nascent stage, and that we still haven't seen "the best or the craziest of what it's able to do."
Cuban shares the same view as the many CEOs who have compared the new wave of AI to the arrival of the internet or the cloud. He said that in the early days of PCs, smartphones, and networks, there was always something bigger and better being created by an innovative entrepreneur, but AI "dwarfs all that."
He said the person who comes up with a way to make AI essential to everyone will make "a lot of money," and it could be a person working out of their basement.
The former Shark Tank star also compares the initial pushback against PCs, the internet, and smartphones during the technologies' launches to what AI is experiencing today.
"Most people condemn things when they first happen," he said. "But then, when you see people using it and you realize the value, that's when people come around."
When asked how he felt about the AI naysayers, Cuban said "you have no say in the matter."
The investor practices what he preaches. Cuban said he uses AI an "insane" amount, from health and exercise tracking to writing software and using text-to-video abilities for work.
For all his praise, Cuban does admit that AI can get things wrong and people should check output that appears incorrect.
Millionaires and billionaires like Cuban are often the most vocal when it comes to worshipping AI – it doesn't threaten their livelihoods the way it does for many people, and some execs see it as a way of making even more money while cutting employee costs.
Cuban did say "I'm not here to tell you it's going to replace everyone's job – it won't," though the likes of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Ford CEO Jim Farley, and Anthropic boss Dario Amodei have all said the opposite. There are also questions over the environmental damage stemming from the data centers powering this new revolution.
Mark Cuban says AI could create the first trillionaire – "just one dude in the basement"
