Mark Cuban thinks AI is quickly becoming part of the basic toolkit for running a business. Ignoring it, in his view, is a fast way to fall behind.
At the same time, he warns that using it carelessly can be just as damaging. Treating AI like a shortcut or a magic fix often leads to bad decisions. The companies that do well will be the ones that use it thoughtfully and with clear intent.
Mark Cuban on How AI Can Make Or Break Businesses
Mark shared his two cents of AI wisdom in a conversation with Clipbook founder Adam Joseph. Clipbook is a content and workflow start-up that has secured a seven-figure investment from Cuban.
During the discussion, Cuban laid out what he thinks smart AI use looks like and where people tend to go wrong. He said this applies to founders and everyday workers alike.
He agrees with Kevin O’Leary that AI can be a big boost for companies that use it well. Still, he warned that not all tools do the same thing, and treating them like they do can cause problems. When teams don’t understand what they’re using, AI stops being helpful and turns into a costly time sink instead.
Mark said, “There’s going to be two types of companies: those who are great at AI, and everybody else. And the ‘everybody else’ is going to fail because AI is such a transformative tool. Because AI is continuously changing, you need to just have people — and, really, every CEO — taking the time to understand every nuance of every new tool that comes out.”
That uncertainty is one reason the largest tech firms are racing to control the space.
Big Tech’s Push to Own The AI Space
Mark said we’re still at the very beginning of the AI shift. Even though tools like ChatGPT have been around for a few years, he sees that as just the early stage. Other types of AI have existed much longer, yet their wider impact is only starting to show. In his view, most of what AI will become is still ahead of us.
The biggest tech players are pouring huge amounts of money into AI, each hoping to come out on top. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Elon Musk’s xAI are all part of that race.
He further added that the outcome is still wide open. It’s far too soon to know who will lead the space, or whether a new player will end up building the tool everyone uses.
The Shark Tank investor added that “They all want to be the destination that everybody turns to, but it’s not that straightforward, and we don’t have a winner yet.”
Cuban believes companies that brush off AI are putting themselves at risk. He sees it as the kind of shift that eventually reshapes entire industries, whether businesses are ready for it or not.
“If I’m going to compete in an AI world, data or information is more valuable than gold, more valuable than oil,” Cuban clarified.
The Limits of AI, According To Mark Cuban
Even with all the excitement around AI, Cuban advises being cautious about what it can and what it can’t do. These systems can sound certain while still getting things wrong, and they don’t always show real judgment or understanding.
Cuban compared AI chat tools to someone with an almost perfect memory. They can pull from huge amounts of data in seconds and pull it together into something usable in one place.
He said that “AI is stupid, but it’s somebody who’s a savant that remembers everything. It does a really good job of assembling all those things that it collected and presenting that just as somebody who has a great memory.”
Mark expanded on how chatbots have other weak spots, too, beyond just making things up. They don’t always have the latest information. It’s also not always clear how they arrive at their answers, and the sources they rely on can be shaky.
He’s noticed a pattern where people hand over too much responsibility to the tools they use. Decisions get deferred instead of being thought through. That’s when mistakes start to pile up. It is not only because the software is bad, but also because no one is really steering it anymore.
Protecting Intellectual Property in the AI Era
The Dallas Mavericks owner also warned that workers who rely on public AI tools may be exposing private company data without realizing it. He also said that firms that publish their work openly should understand that automated systems can collect and reuse that material, even when it wasn’t meant to be shared that way.
He explained that “Companies are learning now that their IP is incredibly valuable. Two years ago, last year, two months ago, they might have just posted everything on the net to show how smart they are, or shared everything in a proposal to show how smart they are. Now, you have to be really careful with your IP.”
The Changing Cost of Open Research
Cuban further elucidated that researchers in universities and hospitals may need to rethink the habit of releasing everything as soon as it’s ready. In an AI-driven world, he believes the old pressure to publish constantly can carry new risks and trade-offs.
“Now, doing that’s the biggest mistake you can make, because all you’re doing is training somebody else’s models. And so you’ve got to be able to understand what IP you need to be able to protect, how you’re going to disseminate that IP, whether or not you want to sell it, or keep it for your own models, and how you acquire information,” he said.
Mark Cuban on AI and Business Strategy
What stands out in all of this is how ordinary the decisions are. When to share. When to hold back. When to trust a tool and when not to. None of that feels dramatic, yet it adds up. Over time, those small choices shape how a company works and what it becomes. That’s the part Cuban seems focused on, not the tech itself, but how people choose to use it.
All in all, in Cuban’s view, AI won’t decide the future. The discipline around it will!
