Mark Cuban: AI Hype vs. Reality, OpenAI's Wasting $1 Trillion, Lebron vs. Jordan

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2026-04-29

YouTube video id: CEz9RRg0FfI

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEz9RRg0FfI

We have a great crowd today and we're
definitely going to be putting this on
YouTube. So, I want everybody at home to
hear how many people we have in the
crowd. Make some noise.
I'm Alex Canitz. I'm the host of Big
Technology Podcast and I'm thrilled to
be here with Mark Cuban for a
conversation about everything AI. Mark,
welcome.
>> Thanks for having me. So, we're in the
middle of this moment where we're
hearing about the revolutionary power of
artificial intelligence where every day
new capabilities are talked up.
>> I've heard that. Yeah.
>> And despite the hype, our day-to-day
isn't changed very much. For most
people, chat GPT is something they might
try one day or it's a better Google. And
so, an AI agent is something that, you
know, sounds like it's in the future but
isn't applicable today. So, how would
you describe the gap between the hype
and the reality on the ground today?
>> I don't think there is a gap. I really
don't. I think, you know, if you're not
using one of the large language models,
whether it's Claude, my favorite chatt,
Grock, um, Gemini, you know, from a
business perspective, since this is a
business and student audience, you're
falling way behind. that if you don't
know what an agent is and you happen to
work at a company or run a company,
you're falling way behind. Um, it's not
that AI is smart. It's not like Arnold's
walking through the door. Um, it's not
like it's going to take over everything,
but like every other technology tool
that preceded it, um, it's it's having a
major impact. I mean, I've been around
long enough. I remember selling PCs to
people who said, "We don't need PCs."
And then talking to people saying,
"Well, we're going to connect them
together." I started a company to do
that. Oh, we don't need them to connect
them. I'll just take this floppy disc
and I'll just carry it over to this PC.
Then the internet came along. What's the
internet? Right. And we started a
company, Audnet, which was the first
streaming company, and people thought I
was an idiot. They're like, "Wait, you
want to be able to use this PC to listen
to sports and radio and watch things?
Dude, I'll just turn on the TV and
radio. You're a you know?" And
then it just goes on and on. And there
was always a group of people that were
first and always a group of people that
were naysayers. And the people that were
first typically ended up getting further
ahead. And I think it's the same with AI
today. But hold on because I was doing
my research.
>> Uhhuh.
>> Not as long ago as February 2026, you
referred to AI as the equivalent of a
hungover intern,
>> right? But that's agents, right? Because
what I was saying is you know what an
agent can do when when you put together
an agent whether you're using cloudbot
you know cloud whatever it may be it
does all the the tedious work that you
don't want to do and all the stuff that
you hope to get to at some point but you
just don't have the time to get to. So
you get that intern probably hung over
Friday morning and that's
>> is there any other kind?
>> Right. And so, um, it's easy to get all
those things done using an agent. And,
you know, you can let the intern stay
out later, come to work later, you know,
because this agent's going to work 24/7.
>> Now, you've expressed some skepticism
along the way. I definitely agree with
you. Right now, we're in this moment
where you need to be using it, but I
think you've been measured in your
comments around AI in a way that some of
the hype folks have not. And so, here's
the question to you. you've been on the
front lines of a couple of big changes
in technology. The way that the AI labs
describe this moment is that it is an
exponential, right? It's it's kind of an
amazing thing where the horizon seems to
be getting closer as opposed to further
away. And they say that makes it
different than our typical technology
shifts which tend to progress linearly.
They're important but linear. Where do
you fall? Exponential or linear?
>> Exponential.
>> What makes you say that?
>> Just because it's changing so rapidly.
you know, when it's linear, like back in
the PC days or even your the first
iPhones, remember, you know, you got
your first iPhone and then you heard the
news about a new iPhone and that iPhone
was faster, more memory, you know,
better connectivity and that's linear,
right? You know, just one step and you
wait for the next step and then you get
to a point of diminishing returns where
like you don't really care whatever
number iPhone we're at, right? It's
good, but there's nothing so stupendous
that's going to make you have to
replace. With AI, the changes are just
coming so fast. You know, the agentic
AI, the ability to, you know, do so many
different things. If you're trying to
program, being able for anybody like,
you know, for cost plus drugs, I like to
compare our pricing to other
competitors. And I just went into cloud
and said, "Okay, go to these three
sites. Here's a list of all the um the
products that cost plus drugs carry.
Take the top 25 most expensive and every
week I want a report comparing the
prices.
12 minutes later, boom. I mean, that was
inconceivable. You know, I I can write
software. At least I could write
software, you know, or you can hire
somebody. You can even get a drunk
intern to do it. But to be able to tell
Claude on your phone to do it and say, I
want to be able to click on it from any
browser and, you know, it's going to
have a couple issues. No, this isn't
right. Reformat this. I'd rather have it
this way. And then it just goes back and
forth. I mean, that's nonlinear. That's
up and to the right.
>> Uh, tell me about the origin of this
drunk intern metaphor. Have you
encountered many of them? Were you one?
>> Where's my beer?
>> That's after this. I You know what?
There's not a lot of jobs I've excelled
at. That was one of them.
If this is an exponential, then where
does it go? I mean, with the iPhone,
you're right, it plateaued. iPhone 15,
16, 17, they all look the same. I was
speaking about the iPhone earlier today,
and I couldn't really even mention what
number it was.
>> I I couldn't remember either just here
as we were talking about it. Yeah.
>> And it's my job to follow this. But if
AI is not going to have that plate
>> a drunk intern
or claude
>> or clad.
>> Um, so if AI is not going to have that
plateau moment, where does this moment
of technology go?
>> Well, to say it won't have a plateau
moment, I that's different than it being
up and to the right and exponential.
Okay. Right. it can continue to grow
exponentially and have and change its
features and change what it can do and
change how it can change business and
education and so many different
industries and then reach a plateau
because like right now if you just
showed if you I I'll give you the
perfect example where AI isn't so good
right so if you were blind and you had a
um seeing eye dog and you were at an
intersection and you also had a cell
phone with AI and you had the choice
between using your seeing eye dog or
holding up the phone and having it guide
you. I'm taking the seeing eye dog every
time. Right? When you think about AI
today and for the foreseeable future,
it's not going to know the um
it's not going to know the consequences
of its actions. Right? So if you take if
you ask Chat GPT or any of them
something and it gives you bad advice,
it has no idea whether you know what's
going to happen because you took that
bad advice. But a 2-year-old that is on
a high chair with a sippy cup, he knows
or she knows that when she pushes that
sippy cup off the the high chair, mom's
going to come running and the baby's
going to be laughing its ass off, right?
it knows the outcome of its um
recommendation or if it's it knows the
consequences of its actions and that's a
big difference right and so while AI can
help as a business tool it's not the end
all beall where it's going to make all
decisions for you and I think right now
we're bifurcating into two types of ways
or two types of people that use AI
people who use AI so they don't have to
learn anything and people who use AI so
they can learn everything. And you see
the difference there, right? I can go to
AI and like, okay, I just got to come up
with this report from my boss. Here it
is. I put it in. It gives me the
research. I give them a report. Okay.
Or, oh my god, my boss is interested in
this subject. They want a report. I want
to learn everything I can and I want to
be able to use AI, you know, different
AIs so that I can come up with the best
um resolution for what they're looking
to accomplish. I know I want to learn
more about all this so I can be better
prepared to help them in the future. And
so people get nervous when people just
use it, you know, just w without without
caring or trying to learn. But the
opportunity to to use it to learn, it is
the great democratizer of knowledge like
we've never seen before. I mean, you can
be a 8-year-old in the worst set of
circumstances in your home, in the worst
neighborhood, anywhere in the world, but
if you have access to a smartphone and
you can go to chatgpt.com or whatever it
is, or claude.ai,
you have access to every library, pretty
much every professor, every consultant,
and you can ask any question. Oh, okay.
I'm interested in learning about
social studies, the constitution, right?
whatever and you can just say teach me
and it'll put together a program to
teach you. And so those people who are
using AI to learn, those people who are
curious and just want to keep on
learning more, AI is phenomenal. You
will always have an edge over everybody
around you. If you're using AI to learn,
if you're just using it just so you
don't have to do the work and it's your
drunk intern,
you I mean, you're going to struggle.
One quick tangent. Actually, the way
that AI gets better is very much like
that child with the sippy cup. The way
that these labs have been training these
models is you have a desired behavior.
When it gets there, you reward it. When
it doesn't get there,
>> you don't punish it, but you don't give
it the reward and it learns to optimize.
So maybe it can even press,
>> but you have to define the optimization
that you're looking for. You have to
define all the goals. You have to know
all the context, right? In real life, we
don't know the context for everything.
We don't know what's coming next. We
don't know how soon it's going to
happen. So, not all that information is
available to train those models. It's
like if you just went to any AI right
now and just said, "Tell me how the war
in Iran's going to turn out.
Whatever it says is, you know, I mean,
pretty much useless."
And that's the way things, you know, so
you have to know where the output of the
AI you're using matches what you're
trying to accomplish. and just training
on like for games it's easy right
because there's only so many
permutations but for real life trying to
figure out the context it's much harder
and it's not nearly as as valuable but
within business we tend to have goals we
tend to have standards we tend to have a
path we have processes and AI is a great
tool to allow you to optimize all those
things
>> so how do you build a business today
given the tools at your disposal is it
different than the way you would build a
business previously I mean
you're trying to serve customers. Do I
think is do I turn over my customer
service to these GPT models? But I
imagine there's more fundamental
questions about the way to build a
business.
>> Well, it just depends where you are in
your business life cycle or are you
starting a business? If you already have
a business, the things that you've
considered outsourcing, you know, your
um customer center, your customer call
centers, whatever it may be, AI agents
are perfect for. So, you can do that.
the stuff you would give to an intern,
AI agents are perfect for. Um, but if
you have a big business, let's just, you
know, we hear a lot of stories about
huge public companies that they try,
they spend a lot of money to try to
implement AI and it doesn't really get
them a return on investment. And people
say, why if AI is so great? Because you
already are running your business the
way you've always run it. And in order
to take advantage of AI, to answer your
question, you have to reformulate your
business completely to build it on AI.
It's the difference between running a
business before PCs and computers and
running a business after PCs and
computers. You would do it completely
differently. So starting a company now
using AI, I mean there's so many
different ways that you can use, you
know, Aentic AI to do processes and
optimize um steps that you would take to
communicate um and then just to use the
large language models to you know to
learn and and learning is not the right
word but to accelerate things right
using you know a chat GPT or collide is
a great typing hack like we got a a
letter an email today from somebody
asking us something about our website
and there was a legal question
associated with it. So I just cut and
paste the whole thing into Claude and I
put a link to the website and I said
show me all my options that I should
should consider here. You know there's
just those are things normally in the
past I'd be like okay I got to get the
lawyer I got to get the person in charge
of this group and that group. Now I just
run it through, learn it, understand it
myself. Then I go to that person and
say, "Is this correct?" And I spend far
less with the lawyer. I spend less time
optimizing with the person ahead of this
group, etc. So when you're working to
create a business, you're going to take
a completely different path using AI
than you would preAI.
>> And and that's why, you know, to go back
to the question I led with, we're why I
think we're seeing this moment where we
have this technology. It's very
powerful, but it's not permeated through
everything we do. It's because what you
just described, that process you
described of there's a question. I'm
going to go to Claude and maybe not a
lawyer and work through my options. It's
great if you're at the top of the
company. In a company that, as you
mentioned, has done things their way for
a very long time. There's a certain
granting of entrepreneurialness that
needs to happen for somebody who's not
at the top to be able to go in and say,
"I'm going to actually use this
technology to its potential. I'm going
to be in entrepreneurial within
established company."
>> Absolutely. You know, like I told my
daughter who's getting ready to graduate
from um college and get a job at a
consulting company, you have to learn
this because if you're not the person
who knows, you know, how to do vibe
coding or do all these different things
with agents and claude, somebody whoever
does is going to take your place.
>> But isn't the bigger question whether
her boss will allow her to do that?
>> No, I mean it isn't. It isn't, right?
You have to know, you have to use this
as a tool and understand how it works.
um so that as it evolves over time, it
can change and changes rapidly. You can
keep up with it. If your boss enables
you to use that extra knowledge, great.
If they don't enable you to use that
extra knowledge, extra knowledge,
they're not going to be your boss very
long. And if the CEO doesn't understand
that, he's not or she's not going to be
the CEO very long. And if they still
keep that CEO who's not using AI to get
ahead, you tell me so I can start a
company to kick their ass.
Because
because that's reality, right?
Literally, you know, when we started
streaming and I gave you the example, it
was like, okay, it's a PC now and it's a
pain to to be able to stream, but
someday you'll just click and the video
will come on. And that's what we have
today. you know, you have to be able to
see where your business could go and
understand how to use the tools
available and, you know, kind of guess
where those tools may take you. And
particularly now with AI, going back to
what I said earlier, the biggest
challenge for a company is going to be
for the CEO to make that decision that,
hey, we're going to have to blow up a
lot of what we do to recreate our
company because if we don't, somebody
else will, and they'll have far less
expense to be able to do it. When it's
all said and done over the next three
years, there's going to be two types of
companies. those who are great at AI and
those who went out of business.
>> Yeah, we could see a new era of
competitiveness because
>> there already is.
>> The door is going to be open to those to
come in and and um and disrupt.
>> It's already wide open. Like, you know,
all of you could take out your phone
right now, go to your favorite large
language model, come up with an idea for
a business, instead of coming to me and
saying, "Mark, is this a good idea?" Um,
just go in and said, "Okay, here's what
I want to do. Here's what I think. write
me a business plan and tell me the good
and the bad and the ugly about this, how
I should finance it, what the economics
should be. 10 minutes later, I I'll give
you an example. When I was trying to
teach myself how to learn how to use
this stuff, I'm like, "Okay, I want to
come up with an idea and see if I could
take it all the way to a patent." I'm
like, "Okay, so let's imagine that we
have a button that we'll put on a shirt
that has a video camera in it that can
record 24 hours, then automatically send
it to my phone or my PC, everything that
it's recorded, and save that for me. And
I want a bill of m I want a business
plan and a bill of materials and a
patent application
12 minutes."
Now, was it all absolutely correct? No.
But I went back and said, "Okay, get me
vendors and approximate cost for all the
bill of materials." you know, everything
that goes into a product, minutes. And
not that it had to be perfect, but think
about what had to be done before. If I
wanted to go through the same process,
I'd go to Google, hey, I'm thinking
about putting this together, da da da da
da, and then you see 15 blue links, and
seven of them would be garbage, like you
just wasted your time on. And then you'd
have to go through all of them. Now it
it you know composits it and puts it
together in the way and the format that
you want based off of everything it's
been trained on and you know the
probability that this is the best
response and any questions you have you
just ask it. Just the idea that this is
a time hack, right? Just a time-saving
tool that allows you to fill your
curiosity and learn things that's
insanely valuable for anybody
everywhere. Like I said, you could be a
six-year-old, you can be a 96 year old
trying to figure something out, and this
is just going to allow you to do it more
quickly. And as it gets more powerful,
it's just going to have more impact.
>> But on the other side of that, like,
isn't it a little bit annoying to you as
an investor because of the slop coming
in? You're someone who famously answers
your email. I'm sure you've noticed
something in your inbox that many of us
have noticed in our inbox, which is that
a lot of inbound emails now sound
exactly the same because written by Chad
GPT.
>> But I created an agent to look for those
things that take them. Seriously. Um,
you know, you get a lot of garbage, but
I always got a lot of garbage. Like, you
know, I on Shark Tank it was like people
would have the next Uber, the next this,
the next that, right? Because people
just copy. And I I've always said, you
know, if there's a thousand people doing
the same thing, why do you want to be
the thousand first? Or if there's
10,000, why do you want to be the 10,000
the first? And it's going to be the same
thing with AI. Now, is there going to be
kind of a a revolt against AI at some
level? Yeah, of course. You know, we're
going to do more things in person
because there is so much in AI. You're
going to be, you know, more interested
in face-to-face communications,
face-toface events than you are going to
be in, you know, the 10,000th email that
said, "Hey, I saw your LinkedIn profile
and you look really smart and I think
you'd be great for this job." I'm like,
"You're sending that to me? Seriously?
>> Did you take it?"
>> Um, I applied.
Um, but you know, so yeah, there will be
things that are just over the top, but
that's because we're in the beginning.
Everybody's trying different things
because look, you know, a lot of that is
going to go right into our spam folder.
And, you know, just like we get spam
calls still that are just annoying as
hell, right? But at least it tells you
now it's spam whereas before it didn't.
And the same thing will happen with your
email inbox and you know other
communication tools where AI will
advance far enough where it'll be a
little battle between their AI trying to
get through the spam bots or the spam
filters and you know that that's just
part of the progression. I mean, isn't
it a cool part of this though that while
it does definitely democratize the
ability for people to pitch an email, it
also creates the ability for people who
may not be technical to build that
minimum viable product and actually show
it to you.
>> Oh, yeah. For sure.
>> For all the people that I'm sure you've
heard and we've all heard, hey, I have
an idea for an app. Do you have a
developer? No.
>> No,
>> you're never going to do it. But now
you're really able to do it because you
can have cloud build%. And that's
probably
>> even worse, right? It's just like, hey,
I need to raise some money so I can go
out and get a developer.
>> Not anymore.
>> Not anymore. Right. And if you're not
willing or don't realize that you could
just go to Claude and learn this stuff
and do an MV a minimum viable product,
then you're not somebody I'm going to
invest in because the number one um
skill set that you can have as an
entrepreneur or as an employee or as a
student is curiosity.
And there's no better way to fill that
curiosity and keep you curious than AI.
I mean, when I was younger, I used to go
into bookstores and sit in the aisles
and look at the books I couldn't afford
to buy or go to a library. The same
thing. Or then, you know, like many of
us, when the internet hit, it'd be like,
okay, and you find yourself going down
these rabbit holes on the internet. Um,
but now it's just so much faster,
easier, more direct. um it it's just a
better tool that you need to learn how
to use.
>> There's one more side to this which is
that the market has been really
punishing software stocks because it's
become that easy to build software. And
I think one of the things investors have
realized is that all this software
that's being built is built to scale but
never perfectly suits people's needs.
There's a lot of room to disrupt them.
with AI potentially you can have a lot
more custom software and they're calling
it the SAS apocalypse.
>> Yeah.
>> Do you think that that selloff is
justified?
>> Yes or no? Depends on the the company.
Right.
>> So that's great because I'd love to know
who is safe and who's going to be
disrupted.
>> It's uh Yeah. Anyways, I won't go there.
Um
>> how about how about just the
fundamentals of these type of companies?
>> Yeah. What you got to have is some
unique IP that is not shared.
>> Okay,
>> so I'll give you an example, a company
called Docu Sign, right? All the things
that we sign, you would think that's
easy because there's other companies,
Adobe and others who do all that. But
it's a global company and all the laws
associated with signing a legal document
are different from city to city to state
to state to country to country and you
have to know all those things. So that's
a unique differentiation that you don't
want to be dependent on the AI having
rights. So that's an example. Um
>> the push back on that quickly is just
that the AI agent will go and find the
local regulation input.
>> No, but you've got to go you got to know
where to send it to go first and what
are you going to have it do um spider
every single municipal municipality in
every city in every state in every
country. It's just not it'll cost you
more in tokens than it will in value,
right? Than you'll get in value. So I
think if a company has IP that as part
of their software, when I say IP, not
just okay, our software is a little
better, faster, cheaper, more this is a
database of things that you can't get
anywhere else that they're not making
available to um to AI to be trained on.
It's their classified information. um
then I think those companies will be
okay. If they just, you know, if they're
just sold by the seat and it's just a
standardized piece of software, they're
in deep dudu.
>> Yeah. When Anthropic, uh there was a
rumor that Anthropic was going to
release a legal plugin.
>> Mhm.
>> The entire legal section of the software
just went poof.
>> Yep.
>> But that that does seem like though
maybe that's ill advised because they do
have proprietary information. Well, yes
or no because all those are coming from
Pacer and other legal databases. Right.
>> Okay.
>> Right. Because I I talked to a law firm
because I was having the same type of
conversation and I'm like, can we take
all of your, you know, legal briefs and
this and that and train from them? Like,
no, they're proprietary, A, and B,
they're specific to a client and we
can't share them. And so, but that's for
a law firm that's not for the legal
software.
>> Okay. Speaking of another area that
might be disrupted, uh, consulting is a
field that people talk about often as
things like implementation and doing
business analysis. You can prompt that
and one-shot it probably. You mentioned
that your daughter is going to work in
consulting.
>> Mhm.
>> Did you bless that?
>> Yeah, of course. Yeah, because Yeah, go
ahead. there going to be a period of
time where somebody's got to help all
these companies figure out how to
implement AI um and not only implement
it but how to reformulate their
businesses because how you do things in
an AI universe where you're trying to be
more productive, more profitable, more
competitive is going to be completely
different. The hardest challenge for
those CEOs is am I willing to blow up my
business um knowing that my stock price
could collapse in the meantime and then
I have to build it up and working for a
consulting firm you know you hopefully
have a lot of proprietary information
that will allow you to guide that CEO as
they go through that process.
>> Let's talk briefly about the business of
AI. Mhm.
>> I mean for from someone in your
perspective looking at the amount of
investment that's gone on to these AI
companies must be fascinating. OpenAI
recently announced that they had raised
$110 billion which is I think 3x largest
IPO ever. They're planning to spend more
than a trillion dollars in
infrastructure in the coming years. I'd
love to hear your perspective not on the
spend but on the return needed to make
those numbers work.
>> They'll never get it.
>> Yeah. They're they're they're just
away that money.
I mean, at scale, right? It's not that
AI is not going to work, but look at
Apple, right? They haven't spent next to
anything, but they've got a foundation
where they can just plug and play into
their devices. But there's a lot of FUD
being put out about the spending, right?
We're going to spend a trillion dollars
because we need all this data center
capacity. Well, the data center, the the
ability to process is going to get
faster, cheaper, right? And it's going
to happen faster and quicker than people
expect. And so, I think a lot of the
numbers that they're throwing out there
um aren't going to come to fruition, you
know, which is why I say they're full of
It's not going to happen. But
those who have just gone allin, some of
them are spending more cash than they
have available. And I I understand why.
I just don't I'm not convinced that for
all of them it's going to work. And the
reason why is we don't know if the the
business of foundational models the chat
pts geminis um grock um claude etc is
going to be like the streaming industry
where there's one leader and a bunch of
players that make money um or some that
make money at least or search where
there's effectively one company and so
they need to raise all the money go all
in and spend everything they can kiss
all the rings They need to kiss around
the world in hopes of being the one,
right? It sounds like um Morpheus, I'm
just waiting for Kiana Reeves to walk
through the door.
But so it's it's going to be very
difficult, but I don't think it's going
to pay off the way they expect.
>> They're away the money at
scale.
>> It's hard to do, right? But
but if you don't go all in like that,
you can't keep on raising money because
as it zigs and zags and you don't know
where it's all going to go, if you're
not still raising money, you're in
deeper trouble because you don't know if
you know if you're not the winner, then
you've got problems. Let me make their
case for the sake of argument. Um, right
now what we're seeing is a moment in the
AI world where the training has gotten
to the point where it's less general.
you focus on certain capabilities. We
know anthropic has focused on code, open
AI has focused on health care and it's
difficult to train up really well in
those disciplines and you see things
like anthropic leading in code for a
while because they've gotten good at it.
So that to me would suggest that there's
going to be multiple winners here
potentially. But in a vertical, right,
like healthcare, you've got open
evidence and open evidence is actually
going out and buying intellectual
property.
Um, chat GPT is not. And what you'll
you're starting to see happen and will
happen even more. If you own
intellectual property, you're going to
see fewer people applying for patents
because the minute you apply for the
patent, it's available to everybody,
which means every model can train on it.
And when I go and talk via cost drugs,
when I go talk to hospitals and research
um um campuses and um schools, I tell
them, "Do not publish,
sell." Because the minute you publish,
even though it makes you feel better and
you seem like you're, you know, a bigger
dog in the community, um all of a sudden
every model has been trained on it and
you've given away your advantage. And so
when it comes to verticals, I don't know
necessarily that they're going to be
able to buy the IP they need going
forward. Now what um Claude is doing
with Anthropic and focusing on
programming that's not really a vertical
per se, right? Because it can be used
for everything. It's it's really process
driven and I think that's smart. Um but
when I look at the other ones,
you know, Gemini has an advantage
because Google search is Gemini, right?
And so now when you do a search, it
comes back with an AI response and it
can sell ads around it. I don't know
what Meta is going to do. I don't know
what um Open AI is going to do when it's
all said and done because I don't think
you know you can I always call like
healthc care for open AI is a feature.
It's not a product and it's a feature
that you know open evidence has that
others can add just by going spending
money on the IP. And then you've got the
bigger problem like when you think about
all these foundational models today and
for the next few years, they are built
on text and pictures, not really video.
They don't know what's happening in the
real world. You know, like I mentioned
the the example about the 2-year-old
pushing the sippy cup off the high
chair. Like it doesn't understand that.
you know, it's not if if you fed it all
kinds of information, it's not going to
be able to come up with E= MC². And to
do that, you have to understand physics.
You have to understand the world. And
so, we're going from large language
models, I think, to what's called a
worldview approach where it's built on,
you know, understanding the physics of
the world and being able to take video
and understand it. I invested in one
company that's putting up satellites
that can look at different materials and
tell you what the makeup of those, you
know, um, natural materials are. Is it
wood? Is it rock? Whatever is in there,
like a spectrograph. And I think that's
going to supersede a lot of what Claude
and Grock, etc. are doing. And so, we
haven't seen the best of AI in my
opinion. Um, and it's going to just get
crazier and crazier and crazier. And so
when you think about all these people
spending all this money, look, if you're
the best programming, you know, like
Claude is, and that's your niche, great.
But I don't know what the niche of these
other ones are. Do you?
>> No. But I I don't think there's going to
I mean, if you have three, four winners,
maybe that works. Maybe three. Any more
than that, it's going to be difficult.
>> I mean, it's like then you're then
you're just a website.
>> Yep.
>> You know, you're just an app. and you
just spent a trillion dollars to be an
app.
It's a lot of money.
Let let me ask
let me ask you this. You're someone who
gained national notoriety
by being, you know, somewhat brash and
rebelling against the establishment.
that. No way.
Uh, do you see some of yourself in the
Sam Alman's and Dario ammo days in the
world?
>> Maybe a little bit in Dario, but not in
Sam. Um,
say more.
>> I mean, you know, Dario now is trying to
scare the out of everybody, right?
But that's part of raising money. Like
when we had Broadcast.com back in the
day, I would say, "We're just going to
replace cable and satellite and all
that." And it didn't, you know, but I
kept on saying, "It's going to be in a
couple years." And here we are 30 years
later and we've kind of gotten there.
And so I think Dario is pushing forward
with Claude and I think to your point
their niche with programming and agents
I think is going to hold for them. Um
and I think they're they understand they
may have to move to a worldview
environment as well. Sam is all over the
map and I think that'll backfire on him.
Um, I just think, you know, they were
they were buying up 40% of this
company's memory chips, right? And they
just backed out of that. You can't do
that. You know, at some point people
stopped trusting and stopped wanting to
do business. You know, they just moved
him to from their safety committee, I
think, to something else. I forget all
the details. I think, you know, Sam's
accomplished a a bunch of amazing
things, but I just I just don't see how
either one of them communicating is
beneficial for anything but raising
money.
>> So, what would your advice to them be?
>> Um, they're doing they don't need my
advice at all. Right. Um,
you know, you just it's so early. It's
just changing so fast. You you know,
you've just got to stay connected to as
many people as possible. Um, but I think
you have to be more involved at lower
levels as opposed to just programmers. I
think, you know, Apple's got it right in
some respect in that everybody with an
iPhone, it's going to be plugandplay to
plug in whichever model you want and
they'll have the ability at some point
just to swap those out for their own if
they choose or just like they've done
with search engines, just pay or be
paid. Um, but I think
you want to be where kids are and
showing schools how to use AI so that
it's a democratizer for education and a
tool for teachers to be able to, you
know, bring out that light in every
student's eyes. You know, right now when
we teach, we teach by the stu the
teachers there. They create a syllabus.
They've got the subject matter and then
we teach everybody the same way and then
we expect all the students to know the
answers to the same questions and
teachers freak out. Well, all you got to
do is use AI. Well, the only reason
teachers are getting it wrong is because
there's they're asking the same
questions of every student in the class,
right? They're telling them to respond
to it with an essay and every student
has to respond the same essay. when in
reality when I talk to teachers what I
tell them is you know the hard part for
you is to get that light in the kids's
eyes to get them really excited about a
subject matter and with AI you can
personalize teaching to each individual
student you can say okay we're we're
doing um American history and we're
learning about the constitution you know
little Billy um in sixth grade or
whatever is maybe isn't as good a
student so I'm going to we're going to
put together um a project under AI that
works at Billy's speed, reformulates the
questions for Billy based off of his
answers, and then keeps the teacher and
parents in the loop so they can see
where little little Billy is. And
hopefully you can even mod, you know,
you can even have the AI personalize it
so that it's more interesting. You know,
if they like learning more about Paul
Rivere than George Washington, right,
you spend more time on Paul Rivere to
get them more interested. You can
personalize any topic with AI. You can't
do it with traditional teaching. And
going back to your question about, you
know, for the AI companies, I think by
getting students and teachers excited
about the capabilities and features of
the AI that you're offering creates a
foundation that that they'll they'll
want to be comfortable with and they'll
stick with those tools for a long long
time. Isn't it true that personalized
tutoring to a student gets you like two
standard deviations above the mean?
>> I I don't know. I don't know. It just
makes sense to me.
>> Let's Someone knows. No, you're just
laughing. Okay. It's true. From the
front from the from the front row. I'm
pretty sure that's the numbers. And it's
just been inaccessible to so many people
because of the expense. But if you're
able to scale that up,
>> there's time there's expense. And you
know, there's a difference between
homework. teacher said, "I got to write
an essay on da da da. I've got to
memorize da da da da da." And going home
and on your laptop or phone or whatever
you have available to you, you know,
having it presented to you with graphics
and videos and in a manner that's fun
that the AI will understand if you're
engaged with it or not. And think about
that. It's not hard for an AI to know if
you're answering the questions. It's not
hard to know if you're g giving more
engaged answers. It's not hard to know
if if you're asking it question or if
that if the student's asking questions,
right? And it's not hard to grade the
test and grade the answers and then
summarize it for the teacher and the
parent and then the parent can make
suggestions based off of conversations.
The teacher can. That's just so unique.
And not only does it apply to teaching
kids, it applies to teaching anybody
anything.
Like if you've ever used Notebook LM
from Google where you could take it and
turn whatever you want a training manual
into a podcast.
I mean it is insane. You know, doing a
training podcast for, you know, how you
want to keep the restrooms at the
American Airlines Center um clean. And
it's a man and a woman. Yeah. We were
just talking. We were just going through
the training manual of how to keep the
restrooms clean. This is really
interesting. The the tools that they
use. I mean, who ever thought that this
mop could work like this? And they made
it so, you know, cuz kids particularly
today don't want to read. But if you put
it in a podcast format, particularly one
that makes you crack up when you're
talking about mops and, you know, how
you're going to mix the solution to
clean the floors, it's just changed how
we educate people. And if you take
advantage of that and learn from it and
learn to apply it, you will have an
advantage as an entrepreneur, as a CEO,
as a manager, as as a an employee, as a
student, as a teacher, all across the
board. If you don't, and you're doing it
the same old way, you get the same old
back.
Who Who does succeed then in this era?
Whoever learns how to use the tools the
best, you know, whoever realizes that
the operative word, the key word in an
AI world is iterate.
As the tools change, you have to keep on
iterating, iterating continuously,
recognizing you're going to get smarter,
your employees are getting smarter, your
customers are getting smarter, agents
will communicate, and they'll be
smarter. So you have to be in a
position, you know, as an entrepreneur.
I know what it's like to, you know, have
thresholds that we all try to hit. I got
a half a million in sales. Yeah. I get a
million in sales. Yeah. Making money.
Yeah. Up to 10 employees. Yeah. You
know, and then you start thinking, okay,
I've got this company down. My customers
like me. But in an AI universe, you have
you more so than now, you're going to
have to continuously improve because
anybody can come in and say they're not
improving. They don't understand this
new tool and so I'm going to go compete
with them. You have to continuously
iterate. I've heard from more than a few
people that they believe that using
these tools inside their companies
effectively means they're training the
AI to replace them. That has to that has
to be true in some cases. What do you
think happens in the broader job picture
here when this technology continues to
ramp?
>> There's going to be displacement.
There's no question about it. But I'm
not one of those people that says jobs
will be optional like Elon Musk said or
um 50% unemployment. No. Um there's
things that if all you're doing is
reformatting, you know, or you're
answering a question yes or no, then you
know you're there's a good chance you're
going to be replaced by AI. But if
you're a critical thinker,
you're there's always going to be a need
for you. If you're a critical thinker
and you understand how to use the tools
so that you understand where best to use
an agent, where best not to use an
agent, where best to do, you know, vibe
coding, where best not to, and you
under, it's like I was telling my
daughter, if you learn how to use these
tools, and you know how to think
critically, you're curious, so you're
always learning, you're always going to
have a job because, as I said, AI
doesn't know the consequences of its
action.
You don't want to be in a business where
you just trust the AI and it's like, "Oh
what did it do,
you know? You need somebody as the
buffer to understand how, where, when,
and why to or why not to use it." And
that's critical. And that's middle
management in a lot of cases. And on top
of that, you're going to have companies,
like I said earlier, that have to
completely reinvent themselves. And when
you reinvent themselves, you're going to
need people that understand how to make
all these pieces work. And so I, you
know, I think there's going to be plenty
of jobs. And if I'm coming out of
school, you know, my daughter already
has a job, but if if I'm 16 years old,
if I was graduating today, or if I was a
16-year-old looking for a job, I would
learn everything there is to know about
AI and I would go to small and
medium-sized businesses and say, "Let me
walk in the door." and all those things
that you know you need to do that are
the bottom of your to-do list. Let me
show you how to use an agent to do those
things because in doing so, you'll be
more productive, more competitive,
you'll make more money. And I'll give
you a perfect example. One of my Shark
Tank companies is called Rebel
Cheeseche.com. They sell vegan cheese
and they ship it all over the world. And
they like a lot of companies that ship
products in boxes. You know, for those
of you who ship stuff in boxes, you know
there's different size boxes for UPS,
DHL, whatever, and you start in one zone
and there's a different price to ship to
a different zone. And then you also
probably know that they don't ever
charge you the right price.
>> Does that sound familiar?
>> Yep. So, what this company did, Rebel
Cheese, was they wrote a little agent
that took a picture of the box when it's
getting ready to ship and determined the
size, looked at the price list, look at
the invo, took a picture of the invoice,
compared them, and when they were
different, created the credit request
and are saving $50,000 a month. And it's
all automated. They don't have to touch
it.
That's where the agents come in and come
in handy. And you have to know how to
implement that. And most small to
medium-sized businesses don't understand
that yet. And they don't have the
resources to just, you know, allocate
people. They don't have the drunk
interns or the sober interns, you know,
to just go do it. And anybody here who's
an entrepreneur knows there's always 10
things that you say you're going to do
on Saturday and never get to, right?
Always. And so that's what agents are
good for. And so if I were graduating
today, I'd be going to these small
medium-sized companies, charging them a
hundred bucks an hour. And then because
these these AI systems, they kind of
drift each time there's a new version,
those agents might need to be modified.
You have recurring income coming in all
the time to go back and check and keep
them up to date. There are so many kids
that took one computer class, you know,
know some Python that are going to be
able to go do these things there.
there's not going to be any shortage of
jobs there. But if you try to work in a
big company and become an entry- level
software engineer or programmer, that's
just not going to be there because the
people in that big company, they're
going to have training. They're going to
have older people that are in the IT
department that know they need to learn
this stuff and those those entry- level
jobs aren't going to be there.
>> Don't worry, they're not hiring for
those anymore.
>> No, they're not. Yeah, they're not.
>> Yeah. Uh you just to to clarify I was
thinking that your your advice was the
young person should go in-house at a
company
>> at a small company
>> but but why wouldn't they then just
start their own business and sell that
as a service? Well, when I say go to
small medium-sized businesses, that's
what I'm saying, right? Go to them and,
you know, show them just like the rebel
cheese example. Show them all the the
things that are too tedious,
timeconuming, and you don't know if
you'll get a return. Um, if you hire
somebody to do it, that's a perfect
thing to bring somebody in for a few
hours, a few weeks, and have them define
agents and allow the agents to do the
work for you. And if you don't know what
an agent is, you're going to have to
learn. And the best way to learn is go
to chatpt or whatever and just type in
there, I'm new to all this AI stuff.
What the hell is an agent? Can you teach
me how to do it and how it would impact
my business? And let me just tell you
part two to that. If you as a CEO,
manager, employee are afraid to have a
heart-to-he heart convers conversation
with your AI,
you're going to fall behind. And I'm not
talking about your personal life. Is
this the right guy for me? Should I date
this girl? No. But what I'm saying is
it's weird to start talking to your AI
and then having a conversation and then
thinking, "Okay, I need to have another
one." Like, I have mine hooked up in my
car and I'll be driving and talking to
it and I'll catch myself. This is
strange.
But you've got to get over that
hesitancy because like some of the
answers like I gave you the patent
thing, they're good answers. like you
were like that is good
and if you don't have if you don't do
that if you don't allow yourself to feel
comfortable with that it your your
career your business life is going to be
a lot more difficult
>> if you speak with it a lot Mark do you
ever ask it can you tell me my deepest
darkest secrets or psychoanalyze me
>> I can be weird giving it that prompt
>> um they're they're counting us down
couple more minutes Sure.
>> Do you guys want a couple more minutes?
>> All right. Uh, good news. I have a
lightning round.
>> Ah, that's never good news for me.
>> Um,
would Jordan or LeBron win one-on-one?
>> Jordan.
>> Jordan.
>> Yeah. No question.
>> Could Kobe beat either of them?
>> Yeah. I mean, they're all so good in any
given game, one can beat the other. Uh,
Indiana alum.
>> Yep.
>> Is all right.
>> Who's yours?
>> Uh, is Fernando Mendoza going to be a
top 10 quarterback in the NFL? Of
course. Okay.
Um, favorite candidate in 2028?
>> They're saying Mark Cuban.
>> Bart Simpson.
>> I don't know.
Um, I thought we might get that answer.
He said Bart Simpson. Is there anyone
you wouldn't vote for?
>> Um, yeah, I got a lot of buddies that no
chance I would vote for. No, I'm It's
not 2028 yet. And look, there's nothing
I can say about politics that's going to
change people's minds. And so, you know,
I'm in the healthcare business with cost
plus drugs. Republicans need low price
drugs. Democrats need low price drugs.
That's all I care about.
That's a winning message. Um, should
should the NBA shorten games?
>> Yes. To 40 minutes.
>> Say more about that.
>> Um,
anybody here watching March Madness?
>> Now, if you're a Duke fan, you were
upset there weren't eight more minutes
in their last game, but nobody's upset
that it's 40 minutes. If you're into the
WNBA, you're not upset that it's 40
minutes. If you watch Olympic B
basketball, you're not upset that it's
40 minutes, you know, high school
basketball, you know, all college games.
And so by cutting back to 40 minutes
from 48, it's equivalent of shaving
about 14 games off the season, which I
think will help um the players bodies.
And I think it would make the games
better because, you know, we all kind of
pitterpatter till the fourth quarter and
now the fourth quarter comes quicker and
every possession um impacts more. Plus,
there's more upsets because, you know,
there's fewer possessions and every NBA
team is still good. And so one team gets
hot, you'll see more upsets. Um I just
think it's it's better across the board
um for everybody involved. And the oh
the other thing is um if you look at TV
ratings or streaming ratings, what's the
number one sport? Football. How many
minutes of actual game time is there in
a football game?
12
15. If you look at ratings for sports,
the less amount of game time, actual
playing game time, the higher the
ratings, people needs their chips and
guac.
And the NBA, I mean, if you look at
hockey, hockey has the hardest time on
TV. What happened with baseball ratings
when they shortened the game?
Straight up.
>> Maybe they could take away all those
timeouts at the end of the game. Well, I
don't even mind the timeouts in a 40
because we did take away some of the
timeouts, but if the game's only 40
minutes and there's just more action
that counts, I think that changes the
game.
>> I had an idea that you could have an AI
make a new rule every game. So, one game
the three-point is actually worth four
points. One game if you dunk, you're
rejected. One game, you're just playing
three periods, not four quarters.
>> You tell me how that league goes and
then I'll call you.
I'm going to I think you're on board
here. Um, last one, easy one. Uh, how do
you fix the NBA draft?
>> Um, I think, you know, shortening the
games is one thing. See, people think
it's about tanking. It has not even Even
the NBA is wrong in this. They think
it's about tanking. It's not about
tanking. It's how do you rebuild a team?
And to rebuild a team
when you're bad, your payroll is lower.
So you have more flexibility in trading
picks. I think you make the game
shorter. I think you limit the number of
picks even more so that a team can trade
from like it's for seven years. You
limit it to not trade for three years
and you eliminate the you um reduce the
number of t number of first round picks
that a team can own at every any one
point in time because once you can't
accumulate any more picks, there's no
reason to stay under the cap. And you
know if you can't stay under the cap,
you might as well try to get better. So,
that's what I would do.
>> Love it. Uh, all right. I'm gonna turn
it over to Dwayne. And I just wanted to
say thank you to all of you. You've been
amazing.