Mark Cuban says AI-skilled kids will be future leaders

“Students who use AI will produce better, more creative work and gain a collaborative relationship with technology that’s needed in the future workplace,” Cuban tells CNBC Make It, adding: “Students who use AI will be best equipped to lead.”

The students who will use AI to find the most success, now and in the future, are those who use the technology to enhance their own critical-thinking skills, rather than replace them, Cuban said.

“Students using AI effectively know how to ask the right questions,” because they have been given the opportunities to spend time getting comfortable using the technology, according to the billionaire. “They use strong inputs and apply critical thinking to evaluate results. AI helps students think bigger, but it doesn’t make decisions,” he said.

According to Samsung's new "Solve for Tomorrow 2025 AI Readiness Study," 88% of American teachers believe learning AI skills is crucial to their students' future success. The study surveyed 620 public middle and high school teachers across the country. However, 81% of teachers worry that an overreliance on AI technology will undermine students' critical-thinking skills, according to the same study, which is scheduled to be published in full on Monday.

Cuban further stated that "access is the biggest barrier" to teaching students how to effectively and ethically use AI tools in school. Along with fellow entrepreneur Emma Grede, Cuban is partnering with Samsung's STEM resource initiative, Solve for Tomorrow, which plans to distribute $2 million worth of technology and AI training resources to 500 US schools in 2026, Samsung announced on Monday.

Teachers commonly express concerns that students will use AI tools to commit fraud, or that information received from AI chatbots and other models will contain errors that spread misinformation. Research shows that these concerns are justified: AI assistants can make widespread mistakes, and this technology enables the creation and dissemination of fake images, audio, and video with relatively little effort.

Yet some other experts agree with Cuban's assertion that students must learn to use AI tools correctly and productively to prepare themselves for future success in the workplace.

“AI isn’t always a crutch, it can also be a coach,” psychologist and author Angela Duckworth said in a May 2025 commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. “In my view, [ChatGPT] has a hidden pedagogical superpower. It can teach by example.”

Cuban often compares the current AI boom to past technological revolutions, particularly the rise of computers and the internet, which contributed to Cuban's early entrepreneurial success. His frequently offered advice to today's students: Spend as much time as possible familiarizing yourself with the latest AI tools and models, so you can impress future employers with your cutting-edge engineering and model optimization skills.

“Every single company needs that. There is nothing intuitive for a company to integrate AI, and that’s what people don’t understand,” Cuban said on an episode of the “TBPN” podcast that aired on Aug. 20, adding: “That is going to be jobs left and right.”