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Billionaire Mark Cuban believes that artificial intelligence will lead to the world’s first trillionaire. The former investor on the TV show “Shark Tank” says this level of wealth will come from a future product or service that is powered by AI.
“We haven’t seen the best, or the craziest, of what it’s going to be able to do,” he said on an episode of the High Performance podcast. “Not only do I think it’ll create a trillionaire, but it could be just one dude in the basement. That’s how crazy it could be.”
The 66-year-old investor says AI “dwarfs” earlier technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, in terms of the number of business opportunities it unlocks. AI’s accessibility also means that these opportunities are available to a wider range of people.
However, we are still in the “preseason” phase, as the most revolutionary use cases are yet to come.
“Somebody will come up with a new way to utilise it in a way we never thought about before,” he told podcast hosts Jake Humphrey and Professor Damian Hughes.
However, Cuban says we don’t yet have to worry about superintelligence — AI systems that outcompete humans — which the likes of OpenAI and Meta are in a race to develop.
“I’m not saying we’re going to get the Terminator,” he said. “I’m not saying that all of a sudden, there are going to be robots that are smarter than people… But we’ll find ways to make our lives better.”
AI will help wannabe entrepreneurs develop their ideas
Cuban believes AI won’t just spark new businesses built around the technology; it will also support amateur entrepreneurs of various backgrounds as they develop their ideas, acting as an on-demand business expert.
“You can go to ChatGPT and just say, ‘Hey, has anybody tried this idea before? And if so, show me who and what and how it works,’” he explained. “And if ChatGPT or Gemini come back and say, ‘Nope, we can’t find anybody who’s done it,’ it’s like, okay, maybe this is a unique good idea.”
“And then you go back to the AI, and you say, ‘Write me a business plan.’ And then you just keep on iterating it over and over and over again.
“Which means, you know, since these apps are free for the most part to try, any kid any age — 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 80, 90 — can use these tools now to do things that you might have needed a business education for before.”
Regulators have to focus on AI output rather than the models themselves
The billionaire investor also weighed in on how the US government should approach AI regulation, arguing that it’s unrealistic to police the models themselves since amateur developers will always find ways to build unregulated alternatives, such as jailbroken versions.
“Any kid can take a PC and download open-source versions and create their own version, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it,” Cuban said. “And if they do something that’s bad, you ain’t going to stop it.”
He went on to say that the outputs, the AI-generated material, are the best touchpoints for regulation: “You can’t stop people from buying Bitcoin or using Bitcoin, but if they try to buy something illegal or do something illegal with it, you can focus on that,” he said. “I think AI is the same way.”
Cuban isn’t the only “Shark Tank” star thinking about AI. Read on our sister site TechRepublic why Kevin O’Leary is building the world’s largest AI-powered data centre in Canada.