Mark Cuban Says Young People Should Learn This Crucial AI Skill

Legendary investor Mark Cuban has some advice for college students looking to break into the red-hot AI industry: become an AI integrator. During a livestreamed interview on TBPN (the Technology Business Programming Network), Cuban told hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays that young people in college should learn everything they can about how to integrate AI within corporations, particularly within small to medium-size businesses. Cuban claimed that “every single company” needs professionals with AI implementation skills because there currently aren’t any intuitive ways for corporations to integrate AI into their work. “There are 33 million companies in this country,” Cuban said, and only a select few have dedicated AI budgets or keep AI experts on payroll. But these companies will still need to adapt for the AI era. Cuban likened this issue to how he started his career as an entrepreneur. “When I was 24,” Cuban said, “I was walking into companies who had never seen a PC before in their lives and explaining to them the value.” Cuban said he would meet with the owners of these companies and present them with customized plans that used computers to fulfill their specific business needs. “This is where kids coming out of college are really gonna have a unique opportunity,” said Cuban. Students spending their senior years “learning the difference between Sora and Veo [two popular AI video-generation tools],” or learning how to customize an AI model, will be able to walk into any business and identify clear areas where AI implementation would meaningfully impact their operations. TBPN co-host Coogan agreed with Cuban’s take, and added that he and Hays hired two interns this summer “because they just built products. Instead of saying, ‘Here’s what I can do,’ they just showed us. They took a day and just built something.” Meanwhile, trying to work at one of the big tech companies with a computer science degree is “probably not the right way to go,” says Cuban. Instead, he says, “go into any other company that has no idea about AI but needs it to compete. There’ll be more jobs than people for a long, long time.” BY BEN SHERRY @BENLUCASSHERRY