Billionaire Mark Cuban sees artificial intelligence as the greatest opportunity of our time. He believes it could even produce the world’s first trillionaire – all from a basement.
What exactly did Mark Cuban say? In an interview with the High Performance Podcast, the former owner of the Dallas Mavericks explained that the development of artificial intelligence is still in its early stages. Mark Cuban is an American entrepreneur, billionaire, and investor, best known for his role as an investor on the TV show Shark Tank and as a co-founder of the streaming pioneer Broadcast.com, which was later sold to Yahoo.
For Cuban, it is clear: The possibilities of AI are so immense that they could not only create new billionaires in the coming years, but even the first trillionaire:
“And not only do I think it will create a trillionaire – it could just be some guy in a basement. That’s how crazy it could get,” Cuban said on the podcast (Minute 1:40, via HP-Podcast).
A trillion (1,000,000,000,000 €), which is a one followed by twelve zeros, is equal to a thousand billion or a million million. Cuban himself has “only” about 5.7 billion dollars in net worth (via Forbes).
AI in daily use
How does Cuban use AI in his daily life? According to his own statements, Mark Cuban is an intense user of AI. The technology helps him particularly in health matters. He reports suffering from atrial fibrillation (A-fib) and uses ChatGPT to document his medications, workouts, and health data. The AI also checks if something does not match or is concerning.
“And damn it, if it doesn’t really do that,” he emphasizes the felt dependency. Meanwhile, Cuban stresses: AI is like a friend who knows something about it or is at least convinced of it – one should not rely blindly on it and should always consult an expert on important issues.
Why does Cuban believe in the potential of AI? Cuban sees AI as still in the “preseason”, meaning the preparatory phase. The true impacts and innovations are yet to come. Compared to earlier tech revolutions like the internet or smartphones, the potential of AI is simply gigantic and not yet fully exploited.
Examples like OpenAI show how quickly enormous values can be created through AI: The company was founded in 2015 and is now worth over 300 billion dollars.
Initially, developers were not even sure what advantages and dangers AI implications and everyday usage could bring. Today, such concerns are more of a fringe phenomenon, as the advancement and integration into daily life have already progressed significantly. (via BBC).
Also, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is estimated to already have a net worth of over 2 billion dollars (via Forbes).
While Mark Cuban believes that a single developer in a basement can become a billionaire thanks to AI, another tech giant shows how absurd reality can already be today: At Google, some employees earn an annual salary – without doing anything at all: Google allegedly pays its AI employees an entire year’s salary for doing nothing
