At an event hosted by Alex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology Podcast, Mark Cuban shared his perspective on why artificial intelligence marks a fundamentally new era in how people access and absorb knowledge.
Cuban drew a clear distinction between two types of AI users. “I think right now we’re bifurcating into two types of people that use AI,” he said, before explaining, “People who use AI so they don’t have to learn anything and people who use AI so they can learn everything.”
For Cuban, the second group has access to something unprecedented. “The opportunity to use it to learn,” he said, adding that “it is the great democratizer of knowledge like we’ve never seen before.”
He illustrated this by pointing out that “You can be an 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.”
He went on to emphasize the competitive advantage of using AI as a learning tool. “Those people who are using AI to learn, those people who are curious and just want to keep on learning more, AI is phenomenal,” he said. He contrasted that with a more passive approach, warning, “You will always have an edge over everybody around you. If you’re using AI to learn, if you’re just using it so you don’t have to do the work and it’s your intern, you’re going to struggle.”
Cuban also connected this shift to his own early experiences with learning. “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,” he said, adding, “The same thing.”
He then drew a parallel to the early internet era, noting, “Or then, like many of us, when the internet hit, you find yourself going down these rabbit holes on the internet.” However, he stressed how much more efficient things are today: “But now it’s just so much faster, easier, more direct. It’s just a better tool that you need to learn how to use.”
He also highlighted how broadly accessible AI has become across age groups. “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,” he said, adding that “And as it gets more powerful, it’s just going to have more impact.”
Ultimately, Cuban pointed to curiosity as the defining trait that determines how effectively someone can use AI. “The number one skill set that you can have as an entrepreneur or as an employee or as a student is curiosity,” he said, concluding, “And there’s no better way to fill that curiosity and keep you curious than AI.”
