Mark Cuban on AI in politics, running for president (or not), and why he hates the media business

Summary

Mixed Signals from Semafor Media – Episode Summary

Podcast Title: Mixed Signals from Semafor Media
Episode: Mark Cuban on AI in politics, running for president (or not), and why he hates the media business
Release Date: August 15, 2025
Host(s): Max Tani (A), Ben Smith (B)
Guest: Mark Cuban (C)

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Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging conversation, Semafor's Max Tani and Ben Smith sit down with entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban to dissect the tangled intersections of media, technology, business, and politics. Cuban offers unvarnished takes on overexposure, the future of streaming, running for president (or not), the failings of the media business, rapid advances in AI, and why trust is today’s most crucial resource. True to form, Cuban is candid, energetic, and opinionated, offering both entertaining anecdotes and deeply strategic views on how AI—and algorithms—are rapidly changing everything from advertising to democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mark Cuban on Overexposure and Accessibility

• Context: Cuban is famous for responding to nearly every journalist and appearing everywhere.
• Cuban's Perspective:
  • Overexposure isn't a real danger if there's something meaningful to promote; otherwise, “I say no to everything” (05:33).
  • Explains how sharing his email publicly led to real business ideas, including costplusdrugs.com (06:35, 07:19).
  • Quote: “If you're trying to reduce the cost of medications, there’s no such thing as overexposure.” —Mark Cuban [06:27]

2. Shark Tank and Building Celebrity

• Impact on Reputation:
  • Shark Tank “changed my visibility and awareness.” Cuban became recognizable beyond sports, gaining a multi-generational audience (08:43).
• Show’s Evolution:
  • Show’s early instability gave way to consistent success, boosting both the show and Cuban’s personal profile.
  • Memorable Anecdote: Cuban recalls kids emailing him “MFFL – Mavs fan for life,” which became a team rallying cry (07:48).

3. The Media Business: Why He Hates It

• Media as a Terrible Investment:
  • Cuban is unequivocal: “It's the worst industry in the history of industries.” (14:17).
  • Reasoning: Digital bits make content endlessly and easily replicable, driving competition and destroying traditional value.
  • AI’s Impact: AI will multiply this effect by allowing individuals to create sophisticated media without professional help, further saturating content (14:17).

4. Media Innovation & Evolution

• Cuban’s Streaming Origin Story:
  • Tells the wild, technical story of streaming’s early days: recording radio on VCR tapes, encoding at home, delivering “Internet radio” years before YouTube (16:13, 16:58).
  • Quote: “I was doing interviews in the mid-90s saying, ‘Ted Turner, we’re coming for you. We’re going to replace TV, because bits are bits.’ And everybody called me a fucking moron.” —Mark Cuban [19:49]
• Why Streaming Took Decades:
  • The missing factor: bandwidth. Only when high-speed Internet reached homes did video streaming, and media disruption, explode (21:04).

5. Everyone Is a Media Figure – The Creator Era

• From Investors to Influencers:
  • The line between entrepreneur and media personality has disappeared.
  • Platforms are easy and cheap to start, but hard to grow—"It's a grind" (10:35).
• Algorithms Rule:
  • Success hinges on understanding and gaming platform algorithms. “MrBeast, if you talk to him, he'll tell you that's his greatest skill, reverse-engineering the algorithms.” (11:44)

6. The Crisis and Future of Trust

• Trust as the Key Business Asset:
  • “If your customers… believe that you’re transparent, and that you don’t have an overemphasis on self-interest… then you’re gonna be trusted.” (12:26)
• AI Deepfakes Already a Threat:
  • Cuban describes rampant fake endorsements using AI and why direct communication by leaders is necessary to sustain trust (12:26).

7. AI Is Revolutionizing Everything—Especially Politics

• AI Will Shape Elections:
  • “There’s going to be two types of companies: those who are great at AI, and every other company.” (31:07)
  • Cuban predicts that by 2028, “every single voter… is going to ask ChatGPT who should I vote for and why?” (31:07).
• Algorithmic Influence on Democracy:
  • Political victory may come down to the ability to influence—or understand—the AI and algorithms that shape people’s perceptions and media diets (29:01).
• Hyper-Personalized Political (and Product) Advertising:
  • Expresses deep concern about minors being targeted by AI-driven ads and political messages (33:11).
  • Quote: “You’ve got a 12-year-old kid asking questions… and [AI says] ‘just ask your parents for your credit card.’ That’s terrifying.” —Mark Cuban [33:11]
• Regulatory Gaps:
  • No one in power is prepared or able to regulate this emerging ad/AI ecosystem (35:11).
• Cuban’s Riff on Political Messaging:
  • “The best campaign is going to be the one that says to people, ‘I’m going to use AI to make your bananas 10 cents.’” (44:32)

8. Media and AI—Personal Practice

• Cuban’s Use of AI:
  • Actively using AI daily in his businesses; sees it as fundamental as the internet revolution (31:07).
  • “It’s faster for me to ask ChatGPT than to go to costplusdrugs.com.” (32:20)

9. On Running for President (Or Not)

• Why He Won’t Run:
  • Clear that he won’t unless a third Trump term is attempted; doesn’t want to put his family through the scrutiny (25:44).
  • Quote: “When I’m 95 and taking my last breaths, I don’t want to say, ‘Well, gee, I ran for president, maybe won, maybe didn’t. I want to know that’s why I quit Shark Tank… prime time for them [my kids], too.” (25:44)
• Who He Likes for 2028:
  • Prefers media-savvy outsiders: Jon Stewart, Scott Galloway, James Talarifko, and laments the traditional options (26:38).
• Media as a Political Advantage:
  • Trump changed the rules—politics is now “a sales job.” Being able to sell is more important than policy expertise (27:39).

10. Selling the Dallas Mavericks & Sports Ownership

• Why Many Owners Sold:
  • Age, estate planning, and not wanting to pass pressure on to kids; likens it to the scrutiny and hate in politics (37:27).
• China and Free Speech:
  • Acknowledges moments when he bit his tongue; points to hypocrisy in global business debates (38:28).

11. Reflections on Openness and Regret

• Does He Regret Being So Open?
  • Sometimes led to fines or social media pile-ons, but “nothing overwhelmingly bad” (39:23).

12. On Elon Musk

• Relationship: Has barely interacted with Musk.
• Assessment: Suggests Musk got “close to the sun… thought he was the sun” and got burned by his proximity to Trump (40:14).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Overexposure:

  “If you're trying to reduce the cost of medications, there’s no such thing as overexposure.” —Mark Cuban [06:27]

• On Why He Hates Media:

  “It's the worst industry in the history of industries.” —Mark Cuban [14:17]

• On Early Streaming:

  “We created our own Internet radio stations… The digital copyright laws were different… I literally could walk into a record store, buy as many CDs as I wanted, put them on our CD jukebox.” —Mark Cuban [16:58]

• On Trust:

  “Trust equals transparency divided by self-interest.” —Mark Cuban [13:00]

• On Why Mark Won’t Run for President:

  “Unless Trump tries for a third term… Otherwise, I’m not going to put my family through that.” —Mark Cuban [25:44]

• On Politics as Salesmanship:

  “The Democratic Party is dead, the Republican Party is dead, it’s the Trump family business. What Trump does better than anyone is selling.” —Mark Cuban [27:39]

• On the Coming Role of AI in Elections:

  “Every single voter… is going to ask ChatGPT who should I vote for and why?” —Mark Cuban [31:07]

• On AI and Advertising:

  “That's terrifying. We're going to open up… 12-year-old kid asking questions… and it [AI] recommends a product or psychologist.” —Mark Cuban [33:11]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Cuban on Overexposure and Responding to Everyone: [05:28] – [07:19]
• Shark Tank, Personal Brand, and Media Presence: [08:28] – [10:03]
• Entrepreneurs as Media Figures & Algorithm Obsession: [10:03] – [12:16]
• Trust, Transparency, and AI Deepfakes: [12:26] – [14:00]
• Why Cuban Hates the Modern Media Industry: [14:17]
• History of Internet Streaming & Selling Broadcast.com: [16:13] – [21:04]
• Bandwidth and Rise of Video Streaming: [21:04]
• AI in Business, Elections, and Advertising: [29:01] – [35:11]
• Why Not Run for President & Favorite Candidates: [25:44] – [26:38]
• Selling the Mavs and Ownership Trends: [37:02] – [38:20]
• Regrets on Open Access and Social Media Blowback: [39:23]

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Takeaways for New Listeners

• Mark Cuban’s candid, sharply-observed insights reveal how the lines between media, business, and politics are evaporating—and why trust, authenticity, and adaptability will decide who thrives.
• He is bullish—and worried—about the AI-driven future, especially its potential to reshape not only advertising and commerce, but political power itself.
• Cuban has walked the walk, from inventing 90s streaming platforms to building billion-dollar businesses, all while staying accessible (sometimes infamously so) to media and fans.
• He won’t run for president (he says), but remains deeply invested in America’s political future and in steering the AI conversation.

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For more, visit Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast feed or subscribe to their media newsletter.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Mixed Signals podcast from Semaphore, where we are tracking the wild changes in this media age and talking to all of the most interesting and important figures who are changing and defining this new era in media. I'm Max Tawny. I'm the media editor here at Semaphore, and with me, as always, is our editor in chief, Ben Smith. Ben, how's it going?

[B]

It's good. Glad we resolved our scheduling woes.

[A]

I kicked you out of the studio this time, but you know, your talent.

[B]

It'S a talent first. Business that is. That is true.

[A]

This week on the show, we're really excited to have a guest who I think probably all of our listeners know, Mark Cuban. He was the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He was an original media innovator, sold his first company to Yahoo, and we're going to be talking to him about a lot of really interesting things. We're going to be getting some business advice from him. We're going to talk to him about the evolution of streaming, his decision to leave Shark Tank, why he hates the business that you and I are in, Ben, and who he thinks should run for president in 2028, and also, I.

[B]

Suppose, whether there is, in fact, such a thing as being overexposed, because if anybody is, it's Mark.

[A]

Well, we'll talk to Mark and unpack all of that right after the break.

[B]

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[A]

So, Ben, when I was starting out as a journalist at Business Insider about a little over 10 years ago now, we had these pretty insane traffic goals that we had to meet. I think I had to get a million page views every month, which is, in retrospect, kind of crazy. One hack that me and several other journalists I think at Business Insider had was when we weren't looking like we were going to meet our quotas anytime soon. You know, we might tick a look at the news of the day and formulate a possible question and send an email off about it to Mark Cuban. And, you know, it didn't work every time, but every once in a while he would get back with enough regularity that we would try it and it would generate a lot of traffic. I know we still sometimes do this here at Semaphore. He's been a willing participant multiple years in a row in our what we got wrong list in the media. And you quote Mark Cuban sometimes in your stories as well. Do you have a relationship with Mark? What are your thoughts on Mark Cuban?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny. I have the same relationship with Mark as lots of other reporters, which is that I send him an email and one time out of three he responds in like 15 seconds with something quotable. I mean, he really is this funny. I don't know. He's sort of an eternal kind of media figure. I mean, the other person I really think of as being like this is Donald Trump.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Who sort of built his profile despite a willingness to weigh in on absolutely everything. Although he's also like in his way, a media pioneer. His big score was he created something called Broadcast.com, which was, you know, a late 90s streaming platform that never really amounted to anything other than a $5.7 billion sale to Yahoo in the last great days of Yahoo. And then Cuban managed to get, I think basically get himself out of Yahoo before everything totally crashed. And so has been this ubiquitous wealthy investor since then.

[A]

Well, one thing that you kind of talk about is the concept of it being a problem on the media side if you're too early. Obviously it wasn't for Mark Cuban because he got paid 5.7 billion dol. That's many people would consider that to be pretty successful. But as a media entity, we're not all tuning in to Broadcast.com right. And maybe he was a little bit too early with that idea as a sustainable long term media property. Though the idea seemingly was close to what we experience today in terms of streaming video.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. He was, he was basically too far ahead and somebody was going to win and it would wound up being YouTube. But no, but he parlayed that into buying the Dallas Mavericks in2020, then really cemented himself as a ubiquitous media figure in 2011 when Shark Tank launched and he became one of the big figures of this show. That's really about investing. But I think the thing in a way that interests me about him most is just like, you know, people used to worry about being overexposed and he's like this totally ubiquitous character. And I'm very interested in how he thinks about it.

[A]

Yeah. And of course, you know, we want to ask him about all kinds of things, so why don't we bring him on?

[C]

What's up, guys?

[B]

Hey, Mark, thanks so much for doing this.

[C]

My pleasure.

[B]

You know, we were talking before about how accessible you are. Like, you and I don't know each other really, but we've emailed a dozen times. You often get back to me in under a minute, which is pretty amazing. I think last time we talked, it was about a story about these group chats, and you told me that you were just responding to people not knowing who they were. And I think you have this kind of unusual instinct to respond to everybody, go on every show. And I think in the old days, people might say, like, that guy is overexposed. And I'm curious how you think about that.

[C]

Overexposure or responding?

[B]

Both, I guess. But really, overexposure first. Like, that used to be something people avoided.

[C]

No, it really. It's a great question, actually, because it depends on what's going on at the moment and what the context is. So if it's during an election period, you know, a presidential election, and if I'm supporting somebody, which I've only done the last couple runs, but then there's no such thing as overexposure. If, you know, when I was running the Mavs or promoting Shark Tank, there was a focus to any type of exposure that I had. If it's okay, there's nothing to promote, there's no good reason to go talk. I'm saying no to everything. Right. So I kind of time it to try to have maximum impact for what's important to me at the time. It may be costplusdrugs.com just going out there talking about health care. And I'd say primarily, that's where I spend most of my time now. And, you know, if you're trying to reduce the cost of medications, there's no such thing as overexposure.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

And what about just to follow up? What about the responding to every email? That is also a very unusual trait of yours.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, it's funny. When I first bought the Mavs in 2000, that's really when everybody started getting their own email address. And so I was like, you know, any idea is a good idea. I wanted to hear from the customers and fans. And so I would post my email on the jumbotron.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[C]

Oh, yeah, it was great. I mean, these are my customers. You gotta listen to your customer. You may not agree with them all the time, but I got Some great ideas. And you know, I'll go back to costplusdrugs.com that got started because of a cold email from Dr. Alex Oshmiansky. I've invested hundreds of millions of dollars and had companies valued in the billions because of cold emails that I've gotten. All it takes is one good idea.

[B]

When you're valuing costplusdrugs.com is there like a line where you're like, the ubiquity of Mark Cuban has x dollar value to this company because he's going to be able to go everywhere and talk about it?

[C]

No, I don't think about that at all. But what I do know is we don't have to spend a penny on advertising or marketing or promotion because I've got a platform and a big mouth. Right. And I'm not afraid to go up against any incumbent interest.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What were some of the ideas that you got off the Jumbotron that were actually good, that you actually used?

[C]

Oh, that I actually did the bath.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So like Mavs fan. MFFL Mavs fan for life. That came from an email that some kids sent me and said, you know, Mark, you know, love going to the games now since you bought the team. Mffl Mavs fan for life. And when I started wearing a T shirt that said that, everybody thought I was, you know, motherfucking somebody. Right. Because I was getting fired by the NBA so often they just zoomed. But you know, just stuff like that. And then there were the dumb ones, you know, people suggesting that, you know, all the athletes grow 2 foot afros or get wigs because that'll help them block shots, you know, whatever. All it takes is one good idea.

[A]

You know, I'm curious. You mentioned Shark Tank, obviously you left earlier this year, I believe. How did Shark Tank change your image? And also how did it change the way that you did business? Did it change any of your businesses beyond the fact that you were invested in some of the companies from the show?

[C]

Right. It didn't change how I did business, but it changed my visibility and awareness. You know, guys knew who I was. Sports fans and particularly NBA fans knew who I was. Grandmas knew who I was because I was on Dancing with the Stars and made it halfway through and beat Floyd Mayweather. So, you know, once I got to Shark Tank, when I first got there though, it was bouncing around like we would be the replacement if Desperate Housewives took a night off on Sunday. They'd pop in Shark Tank if, you know, they put us on Tuesday. Then they move us to a Wednesday, and they asked me to come on as a guest Shark Tank. Jeff Foxworthy did three episodes as a guest Shark, and then I did, and it just clicked and I loved it. And so they invited me back. And then everything just kind of came together and the show just took off. You know, we went from being moved around to being set on Friday nights. And my visibility and people, you know, knowing who I am was just boomed, right? It was. It was crazy, you know, to the point now when you do it 15 years and it's on CNBC, on repeats, the thousands of schools use it in classrooms. We're inescapable, where everybody. Where everybody sees us. And so that really just lifted up my celebrity, if you will, to a whole new level.

[B]

I think when you did it at Shark Tank, it was really unique. The idea that these kind of investors who operate behind the scenes are suddenly like this whole process in public now. Every investor you can think of is all over TikTok. There's the all in guys all the way over to Ray Dalio. And I think there's been this kind convergence of everything becoming media and everyone becoming a media figure. And I'm curious, like, is it. I don't know, I'm curious what you make of that, particularly, I guess, in, like, an investment environment. Is it. Why are people doing that? Because it's fundamentally good for business? Is it just an ego trip?

[C]

Well, all the above, right? I mean, you know, the marginal cost to create a show, as. I mean, you guys know all the costs when you first get started, relatively speaking, it's not all that much. So if you're going to start a business and you think you've got the ability or personality, starting a podcast, starting a YouTube channel, starting a Twitch channel, whatever it be, the. The marginal cost to start is relatively small. And every. No one starts one of the pod, starts a podcast or show thinking they suck, right? And so everybody goes into it with, you know, high hopes and big aspirations. But I think the ones we talk about, like all in Rogan, they've been around for a long time. They didn't all of a sudden have success on day one. And I think what people don't realize and I respect and I think is part of the answer to your question, is that it's a grind to build up an audience. You have to be consistent. You have to keep on coming up with new topics, you have to keep on finding new guests, you have to find new angles. You have to be responsive and aware of everything. That's going on around you. That's not easy. And you've kind of seen the shift away from linear television. You're not going to really launch from linear as much anymore. So you've got to fight your way through. And then on top of that, over the last three, four years, the algorithms have driven everything. You know, it used to be about follower count and likes, and now it's, you know, consumption. And how does the algorithm drive that? And can you reverse engineer the algorithm? And that's as much of a skill as anything else. And Mr. Beast, if you talk to him, he'll tell you that's his greatest skill, reverse engineering the algorithms.

[B]

I mean, do you think that to be like a business leader these days, you have to be living in public, be on social media, be putting out videos all the time to be an investor, to be a business leader, it.

[C]

Depends on your business, right? Depends on how you communicate with your customers, you know, how and how do they want to be communicated with? The underlying principle in all that is trust. How does your business generate trust with its customers? If there's not a relationship between, if there's not already a trusting relationship with the business, then the CEO or somebody better be out there to generate that trust, otherwise that company's gonna have problems. Because that is the most difficult, fundamental product, if you will, or feature of any company these days is trust. Because there's so much bullshit out there. There's so much, you know, hey, that's not really Mark Cuban selling those ED pills, right? That' somebody putting, using AI to put me in the middle of something, or, you know, using a shark tank clip and then redoing the audio. You need to be able to communicate when there's a lack of trust. And I was actually listening to a healthcare podcast not long ago, and this guy said, trust equals transparency divided by self interest. And so if your customers or prospects understand, believe that you're transparent, showing your prices, your costs, whatever it may be, and that you don't have an overemphasis on self interest, it's all about me as opposed to being about my customers, if you have that good ratio, then you're gonna be trusted. If not, you better have your CEO or whoever out there to communicate in a transparent manner in order for people to trust you and want to do business with you.

[A]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't do a lot of media investing these days. You actually started off in the media business. That's one of the ways that you made a lot of what do you think about the kind of current state of the media business when you step back? What's your take on just the general landscape as you look at it? And why don't you do as much media investing these days?

[C]

Oh, it's the worst industry in the history of industries, you know, clothing, music, media. Right. Because bits are bits. You know, in a digital world, bits are bits. They don't care what they are, how they're communicated or how people consume them. And so that means everybody can compete. And now with AI, with the Vos and Soras of the world. Right. The ability for somebody who's creative to not have to be dependent on a third party to create the output is just going to have so many implications. I literally thought about starting a podcast where I just talked to Gemini or ChatGPT or perplexity and just ask it deep questions, right? The questions that you normally don't want to ask in a normal podcast because they're too esoteric and people, you know, but when you talk to a non entity and you know, now they can go. So I don't want to say deep because they're not smart, but you know, the way they respond is insane in a lot of respects. Insanely interesting. I think, to go back to your point, media has changed forever. Forever. There is no limit. And if you're creative, you can amplify that creativity because you're not limited in time, funding or access to professionals like you were before. And those professionals that you might have been dependent on, the producer you're using, the audio engineer or video engineers that you're using, it just gets condensed in their ability to do their job faster, better, cheaper, so they can do more things. It's just like you're using all digital tools now. You don't want to know what we were doing in 1995 to try to communicate streams. I mean, it was ridiculous.

[B]

I kind of do want to know.

[C]

Oh, you do want to know. Wait, let me see.

[B]

Mark is rifling around the walls here. What is that? Can you describe that for us, Mark?

[C]

Yeah, so this is a case that I put together on my own because when we started audionet, audionet.com, which was the first streaming, commercial streaming company, our first radio station that we started streaming was KLIF 570am in Dallas, Texas. And they did sports news and everything. And to get capture the streams, I literally took down an eight hour VCR and we connected it to their board using the analog outputs, right. And input into the VCR and These were the first two tapes that we used.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[C]

To record eight hours of audio. And then I would bring them back home to my house, and on a Packard Bell 90 MHz PC, we would encode them and put them on audionet. Now, that's just one piece of it. Now, in order to Listen back in 1995, you had to have a PC, obviously, no phones, you know, or a laptop. You had to have a modem, which was going to be 56k. You had to. Or you could have ISDN or be in an office. Then you had to have a subscription to an Internet service provider. Then you had to download what was called a TCP IP client, which allowed you to communicate over the Internet. Then you had to download the streaming client. And we used, like, Microsoft Net Show, Zing Real player. Whatever was available, we would use because it was better than what we put together. And then we would have all these servers. And so we would literally have to, you know, set up a network so that it would go through our servers so that we could support however many people. Like, by 1996, we would have 20, 30,000 people listening in the afternoon to a Chicago Cubs game. You know, there was a show called Dan and Scott, which was a comedy, actually, the very first podcast that was really popular. We would have police scanners that people will listen to. We literally. We created our own Internet radio stations. We had hundreds of radio stations. We would play Christmas music on One Station 24 for, you know, and just put it on loop and change it once a month, you know. And back then, the. The digital copyright laws were different. It was before the dca. And so I literally could walk into a record store, buy as many CDs as I wanted, put them on what we called our CD jukebox. And I highly. Anybody who's curious about the history of this stuff, go to the Wayback Machine and just put in audionet.com in 1995. But we literally had a CD jukebox where we would play all this stuff so you could just listen to whatever music you wanted to. We would combine it into different types of music station. There was a song by Matchbox20 that they came to us with a CD and they literally broke it and it became a hit. We had Willie Nelson CDs, we had Ethel Merman CDs. We had just the craziest shit ever.

[B]

And you can hear in your voice, like how. I mean, I was. I remember that time and how exciting that was. I mean, it was an incredibly hot company that you had and that you sold ultimately, for $5.7 billion to another incredibly hot company called Yahoo. And I wonder, I mean, this was, as you say, this was the early days of streaming. And when you. Back then, I mean, you were one of the people saying, this is all coming. It's all going to be streaming. Maybe you were actually a little early, too early. But when you sort of squinted your eyes and looked to the future, was this what you were seeing? Everybody streaming video on their phone all day?

[C]

Absolutely, yeah. On the phone. I always looked at it as when we could get into cars and we could be on phones. It was over. We won, right? Because there was no way to compete with us. But I mean, literally, I would do interviews back in the mid-90s like that, and I'd say, ted Turner, we're coming for you. We're going to replace tv, because bits are bits. And everybody would just call me a fucking moron because they're like, dude, I have a tv. What do I need to go through all this work? I'm like, you don't understand. It's only going to get faster, better, cheaper, and it's just a matter of time.

[B]

You surprised how long it took?

[C]

Yes. Yeah. Really shocked at how long. I mean, now it's transparent. You go to your Netflix, you don't even know you're streaming, right? You just click on it. As long as you have your Comcast or whatever account, it's just all there. But I literally thought, you know, by 2005, 2010, it would all be ubiquitous like we're seeing now. So I was way off.

[A]

Why do you think it took so long, though? Because, I mean, it's funny to think about YouTube, right? Which is a company that's been around for 20 years and the technology hasn't changed like, that much.

[C]

Right?

[A]

It's just that people all of a sudden woke up and decided that they wanted to, you know, you. I guess the big innovation is you could have YouTube on your TV, basically. And people decided to start watching YouTube on their TV.

[C]

Well, it wasn't even that. It was bandwidth, right? You went from modems in the late 90s to a little bit of ISDN. And then people started getting broadband to their homes. And once you started getting broadband to your homes, then we could start doing video. That's why we changed the name of audionet to broadcast.com and. And the crazy stuff we could broadcast, like we did a deal with Victoria's Secrets that just, you know, we did one of their fashion shows from Cants and just blew up the Internet. Like literally all of our servers, you know, sequentially crashed. It was just insane. When the other time we blew up the Internet was when Bill Clinton, when they released the transcripts of the month of him as related to Monica Lewinsky, we literally had somebody take them and voice them, right? And then we put it online and again we crashed the Internet and then when they came out with the actual audio, it was just all these things. As people got bandwidth, they realized that anything was accessible and all of a sudden they wanted everything.

[A]

Well, we need to take a short break, but we'll be right back with more from Mark Cuban right after this.

[B]

This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier, about what people aren't talking about when it comes to AI. Josh, you and I spend a lot of time on air and off talking about AI. What do you think we aren't talking about enough?

[D]

My washing machine at Home has 57 programs and I use two warm wash, cold wash. And that's kind of indicative of one of the challenges and what we're not talking about as an industry right now, which is the capability of the AI tools for marketers is growing exponentially by leaps and bound. And yet us human operators are not really matching that speed. We're not really engaging with these tools. We're defaulting to the old ways of working. So we've all had that experience where we go onto an AI tool tool, we put in a prompt, we get something back and it's okay but not great. So we try it again and then it's a little bit better, but it's still not quite right. And we go, oh, AI doesn't work. And we go back to our agencies, we go back to our teams, we just go revert to the ways we have been working. One of the things we've really been focused on is how do we upskill and up level and actually train our teams to not just give up when they get the first not perfect results. AI is not not perfect, but it gets you to 70, 80% of where you're going to get to anyway and it does so much quicker. So we've actually been working with teams to help create best practices playbooks and really give coaching to how to actually uplevel the human side of the equation to match the AIs delivering what they are already.

[B]

Where can we find out more about improving the human side of AI?

[D]

Over at thinkwithgoogle.com, we just published a really deep and thorough Gemini prompt database and playbook. Really useful prompts to allow you to do anything you can do with Gemini. Really train yourself, work your creative muscles and actually get better at AI. Head on over to thinkwithgoogle.com thanks, Josh.

[A]

Your old Shark Tank colleague Kevin O' Leary has actually become. This time around he was, he supported Trump I think, last time around as well. But this time around he's become much, much more vocal. He's on CNN many evenings of the week defending Trump. I mean, what do you make of that? Have you talked to Kevin?

[C]

Yeah, I talk to him. I give him shit all the time.

[A]

Yeah. What do you think of his CNN appearances? Do you think he's doing an okay job defending Trump?

[C]

You gotta understand Kevin, Kevin wants to stay relevant. I love Kevin as a friend. He's a great friend. He's not dumb, he's smart. And he knows that when he disagrees with people, that's when he gets the most visibility. And so, you know, you talk about, you know, visibility and awareness and that's what Kevin's all about. He wants to stay in the mind's eye of everybody and he wants to be that guy. That's contrarian. That's just like, you know, we try to tell the Democrats to go on Fox News on Rogan and everything. Kevin's the corollary to that. And he understands that, unlike the Democrats, other than Pete and some others, he understands that that's a good strateg to create visibility.

[B]

And you are perpetually mentioned as somebody who might run for president in 2028. One of our most recent guests was chalking you up Scott Galloway. In fact, how are you going to approach that decision?

[C]

I'm not going to do it. I've said the only way I would do it is if Trump tried to run for a third term. Because then that's just changing everything and that's a true threat. But other than that, I'm not going to put my family through that. You know, my kids are 15, 18 and 21. And the amount of grief and abuse that just comes with doing that when I'm 95 and taking or 105 and taking my last breaths. Right. I don't want to say, well, gee, I ran for president, maybe one, maybe didn't. I want to know that, you know, that's why I quit Shark Tank. That's one of the reasons I sold the Mavs. You know, this is prime time for them, too. And, you know, I don't want to take anything Away from their ability to be who they want to be.

[A]

Even though we're three years away now, obviously, there's a lot of candidates who are out there who are already visiting South Carolina who are, you know, talked about. There's a dozen or more. Who do you like out there so far? Who do you think is doing a good job?

[C]

Scott Galloway would be great. John Stewart would be great. James Talarifko, I think. I forget his name. He's the.

[A]

Yeah. Texas lawmaker.

[C]

Yeah, from. From Texas. I love him. Right. I mean, he's still got to figure his way. He's young and at 35 or 30, whatever age he is, and he's still got to learn a lot of the nuanced elements. Not of politics, but of implementation, of programs and, you know, what works in business and doesn't work. But I love the fact that he's a hardcore Christian that doesn't put up with hypocrisy. And that is what is driving, I think, our country in the wrong direction is so much hypocrisy. You know, say one thing, do another thing. You know, don't matter what you just said, doesn't matter what you believe. And I think he stands on principles. I think Scott's like that. I think Jon Stewart's like that. But in terms of traditional politicians that we've seen, meh.

[B]

It sounds like you think basically like a media. A media guy makes a pretty good candidate.

[C]

Well, if you gave me, like, when I was campaigning with Kamala, her biggest problem was her campaign would not let her sell. She's not a bad salesperson when you talk to her one on one. And she's smart, she's driven. But they did everything as if it was all driven by a consultant, which it was. And you can't be that way in a world with Donald Trump. Donald Trump changed all the rules. The Democratic Party is dead. The Republican Party is dead. It's the Trump family business. On the Republican side, it's nobody's business. On the Democratic side, they don't know what to do. But what Donald Trump does better than anybody is selling. I'm going to end all wars. Day one, I believe you. I'm going to cut prices. Day one, your grocery price. I believe you. That's why the guy in New York, I think, is doing so well.

[A]

Yeah, Zoran, Zoran.

[C]

He can't do any of that shit, but he doesn't care. He's saying it anyways. He's learned from Trump. He's Trumpian in every single way. You Want lower grocery prices? I'll open the grocery store.

[A]

Do you think that this field in 2028 on the Democratic side is gonna be stronger than the fields in 2016 and 2020? Kind of. Because the Democrats have, at this point have learned that, okay, something we've been fundamentally doing hasn't been working. Cuz we've lost two out of these three times to Trump.

[C]

I think it's the wrong question, sorry.

[A]

Right.

[C]

The question is what drives people to vote? What makes people select who they're going to vote for? Algorithms. And what's going to change in addition to algorithms? ChatGPT, perplexity, Gemini, all these things are going to only increase in capability and ability and impact. We're using search engines less and with all the abilities that, you know, AI video can do, who knows what our usage patterns are going to be on social media. It could be that, that we start to hate social media because it's all the guerrilla memes that are out there and all the video stuff that are hysterical but dominate the social part. And who knows what that does to algorithms. And maybe we want more face to face communications. Maybe we need somebody. And I think this is the case, we need more face to face communications. But both parties, whichever party wants to win, has got to be an expert in AI. Not just in how you use it from a media perspective and a marketing and a sales perspective to get voters to get out and vote, but also how you implement it to improve the economics of the country to reduce the stress of, you know, all of our citizens. Because that's what AI can do. And Donald Trump has a hard time spelling it. You know, there's some people around him that, okay, are okay with it, but, but just like Zoran, somebody's going to be out there and going to say, I'm going to use AI to drop the price of butter to 7 cents and I'm going to cut the cost of bananas to 15 cents because of AI. And here's how I'm going to demonstrate. We're going to improve the supply chains and all that and it'll go right over everybody's head. But they'll hear bananas are going down, right? Price of gas is going down, the price of energy is going down because of AI. And if you look it up in ChatGPT, we'll see what it says. And I think that's the final piece that'll determine an election.

[A]

How are you using AI in your.

[C]

Businesses all day, every day? Just trying to learn everything I can. There's going to be Two types of companies, those who are great at AI and everybody and every other company. I've been in tech business like we've been talking my entire adult life and I've seen everything and the impact it's had. And in every single one of those cases I've been able to be successful, you know, starting the first streaming company, starting the first hall high def company, et cetera. Because you could see a path where the technology was going. You know, when I started HD Net, it was like the high def, you know, plasma TVs were $20,000 and people like, ain't nobody paying 20,000. But it was easy to see that they were going to go down in price. Performance, performance. With AI, it's not so predictive. But what I will predict is every single voter for presidential and probably the lower races starting in 2026. Right. And Presidential 2028 is going to ask ChatGPT who should I vote for and why? Or this is what I heard and this is what I've said and they're. Or they're going to ask perplexity or they're going to ask, you know, Gemini.

[B]

So there's going to be a real fight for control of those results, isn't there?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And you can and you can't control them. Right. You know, like cost plus drugs, I use it. Like, I'm like, what's our price for this particular drug? Because you know, it's faster for me to ask ChatGPT than to go to costplusdrugs.com and the answers are 99% of the time they're correct. And so it's going to change everything.

[A]

Well, we already see that happening too in pr. I mean, there was an article, I think it was in New York magazine that was published. I've heard this a little bit in my reporting as well. Evolving fields in communication is not the fight over SEO. Right. Like that used to be incredibly important. Yeah, yeah, right. Or geo. Right. You know, whatever it is. But it is really interesting that a lot of how people are going to define the images of these, of companies and of people is going to be fought not about like just fighting over lines in a Wikipedia page.

[C]

Well, I'll tell you the bigger question, the bigger problem, right, is advertising now and I'm not talking, you know, an ad that goes, you know, you see your list of chats and there's an ad buy my pineapple juice type thing, right? I'm saying you've got a 12 year old kid asking questions that are very personal and if it's listening and saying, oh, okay, you need, you know, for your acne, you need to buy this cream at this pharmacy, you know, or having problems, you know, not getting along with your parents. Let me recommend this psychologist and just ask your parents for your credit card. That's terrifying. Yeah, terrifying because we are going to open up and there's no way to avoid this. We are going to open up. You've opened up to it and asked questions you would not want anybody to know that you asked. I have. You have. Whether it's about health, whatever it may be, every single human being is going to do that. There are 350 million daily users for ChatGPT. And so how we deal with advertising, advertising is everything. Because go back to what I said about the algorithms and how much impact that they had. Like they're eating cats and dogs was brilliant. Nobody's eating cats and dogs, but, you know, it just was there everywhere you turn, Brad. Summer should have been, but they dropped the ball.

[B]

So what is advertising? I mean, I think you've talked about banning advertising or at least freezing it for now in these AI products. What do you think is, like, what is the ad product? Wind up being the ad product?

[C]

Look, if you list it, just like a search engine listing, you know, blue link in the chat, great, have at it, right? Even if you customize it, you know, but there's, you know, there's gotta be age limits. You can't be, you know, have a minor kid, then they're asking questions about their girlfriends or their parents or, you know, depression, and you're coming up because you know everything about them.

[B]

This can be hyper personalized, right? This can be a new kind of advertising.

[C]

Hyper personalized, yeah, It'll be just like, you know, The Facebook In 2016, Brad Parsco did the thing with Britannic, I forget their name.

[B]

Cambridge Analytica.

[C]

Cambridge Analytica, yeah. Where they just micro targeted everything so badly that they had to get rid of it. Right? But it won the election. In my mind, it won the election for them. And so you can hyper target down to the personal level. I mean, literally, algorithms. Right now your YouTube feed is different than mine. Your TikTok feed or Instagram feed is unique to you. Unique to me. But you get the point, right? With generative AI, by 2026, you see the speed of improvement. These things are going through. Oh my God. And so the candidate that just uses it to lie their ass off, because nobody understands it, uses it to get, like you said, geo, right? To get to their benefit. What Kind of limits are there. We've got to figure those things out. And nobody is capable of doing it. Republicans are impotent because they're terrified of Trump. Democrats are impotent because they're terrified of, you know, everything. And so, you know, nobody does anything. And that's why people are looking for somebody outside the political realm, like me or Scott Galloway, Jon Stewart, whoever it may be, because we're actually doing something. We're not saying we can't do it until we're elected. We need to get the House majority. No, it's like, if you are anti billionaire and you want to get billionaire taxes passed, great, more power to you. But you gotta wait if you want to come to me or anybody else that's wealthy, Scott Galloway, whoever, and say, let's put together this program. That's how you do shit. That's how you get trusted. That's how people say they actually do things instead of just, you know, play politician.

[A]

Well, Mark, while you're here, we want to ask you about basketball as well. We want to ask you about professional sports. You know, I was seeing, as I was preparing for this interview, I was reading a stat that One third of NBA teams have changed owners since 2019. You're a part of that statistic. You sold the Mavs, I think, in 2024, the Lakers sold. Earlier this year, the Boston Celtics sold as well. Why is now the time to sell an NBA team? Why is everybody doing it?

[C]

You know, everyone has their own reason, but part of its age, you know, it takes a lot of energy and, you know, are you gonna pass it down to your kids? For me, I want them to go in their own direction. And you know how hateful sports are. Look what happened with Nico and all that and the whole Fire Nico stuff, you know, there were lesser versions of that. It was always, get Luka help, right? Or do this or do that, you know, trade Dirk, you guys suck. You'll never win. And then we win a champ that, you know, in this social media day and age, just like running for president, I want my kids to go on their own path and figure things out. And it's. Politics and sports are the two areas where it's, you know, you can't just say, hey, just take over the company and do your thing. It's just a different beast. And then, you know, you have to deal with estate issues and all that kind of stuff. And I think that plays a big part of it as well.

[B]

When you own the Mavs, you know, you're obviously outspoken about Pretty much everything. Did you feel you had to bite your tongue specifically about China when you owned the maps?

[C]

A little bit, but not that much. Like, you know, people would always try to play got you with you, and then I would just ask them what phone they use, you know, and it's pretty straightforward. And there's a ton of hypocrisy, but. And again, that goes. Goes to the heart of everything, right? You know, the hypocrisy and the whole gotcha thing, that's just part of media then and now. But yeah, there was a certain point. Cause I didn't want to step in it. There was no upside. And I'll deal with domestic politics. You don't see me talk about global politics at all.

[B]

Finally, we talked at the top about how open you are, how willing you are to talk to everybody. Every journalist, respond to every email.

[C]

Not everyone, trust me. You know, when I talk back to you, 99% of people I say no to.

[B]

Well, thank you. But I guess I wonder you're on the open side of this stuff. I wonder any of those you really regret.

[C]

I mean, there were times I would get fined by the NBA, but I knew that was coming. There were times like during the. The presidential races where I said what was on my mind about, you know, Donald Trump, or, you know, about progressives, for that matter, or about taxes, knowing that I would get shit online and that would kind of destroy my ability to use Twitter or X for, you know, at least a week, but nothing that was just like, overwhelmingly bad.

[A]

Well, we should ask. You tweet a lot. You post on X. You've gone back and forth with Elon Musk. I mean, Elon has kind of stepped out of the spotlight a little bit recently, which seems to have been kind of a smart move. Have you talked to him recently? I mean, what's been your read on the kind of last nine months or year of Musk in which we've been on this kind of rollercoaster?

[C]

I mean, I've talked to Elon twice in my life, and that was 10 years ago. And so we really don't have a relationship at all. But in terms of what he's done, you know, he's had to make some choices, you know, and it's. There's been books written about, you know, people. Anybody who works with Donald Trump has been burned, you know, and I think he got close to the sun and what happened, happened.

[B]

He thought he was the son.

[C]

He thought he was the son. And, you know, Donald Trump's a unique beast. You know, he's good at what he does, even though he's good at what he does. And when it comes to everything but governing, in my opinion. But yeah, Elon, I think, and I've seen this in a lot of people I know that have tried to work with Trump, they think that they could push them in the direction they want him to go and it just never works.

[A]

Well, Mark, we really appreciate you coming on the show today. This was totally fascinating. We appreciate you being game for a wide variety of topics. So thank you.

[C]

It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it, guys.

[B]

Thank you, Mark.

[C]

It really was a lot of fun. Thank you.

[D]

You.

[B]

I want to tell you about Think with Google, its marketer's go to spot for insights from top CMOs, practical guides on emerging tech and strategies that drive real growth. You can learn how AI can help level up your marketing and address your biggest challenges across creative media and measurements. Whether you're a marketer looking for new ways to reach your audience or a curious leader wanting to get inspired, Think with Google is the place to be. Learn more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.

[A]

So.

[B]

Max Cuban will talk with authority and confidence and a kind of salesmanship of just about literally anything. Are you sold?

[A]

I mean, how could you not be? I think like most of America has been sold over, you know, the last X number of years, right? 30 years he's been in public view. You know, what I took away from our conversation is that what Mark is really interested in at the end of the day, and you see this on his Twitter feed, you see this kind of everywhere he is. And I'm surprised that it's not basketball so much. It really is American politics and the pharmaceutical business that he is in. Those are the things that he's really interested in more than anything else. And he kind of has some perspective on the media business. Clearly he was interested in AI and was interested in the kind of tech adjacent media business. But honestly, I think the thing he's obviously most interested in is politics at this point. That's why I find it to be so fascinating the idea that he doesn't want to run himself.

[B]

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And it did not sound to me like a guy who's totally ruled it out. Even if he said that just because, because, by the way, I brought the price of your drugs down is an incredible platform on which to run for president as well as being a really interesting business idea. And he is, I mean, he is just, he's an extraordinarily Good salesman. He must have mentioned cost plus drugs like 7 times in the course of those conversations. I mean, so impressive.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that's why he was on. That's really why he's on the show is he's a marketing guy, you know, in addition to being a very successful investor in several ways. But I think that in reality, one of his greatest skills, like many people who have come on our show who are great media figures, is marketing.

[B]

Do you share his concern about advertising and AI? I sort of didn't see that coming and was interested in it. I don't think I've totally processed his concern. What do you think?

[A]

I mean, I would imagine that there's some companies maybe in his portfolio that are probably chomping at the bit to be able to advertise to people through ChatGPT, through the authority that comes with large language models. Right. And it is going to change the advertising business. It already. AI already has. Right. It's going to change it on the, on the user and, and sales side. But I mean, I don't know. I don't know what that for us in, in the media business, but I certainly think it's interesting. But it was more interesting that he was really thinking about it through the lens of how is this going to shape people's perspectives of the candidates and which candidate has a plan to win on AI in 2028. That's. That's really interesting. And can any of these candidates kind of trick the, you know, Chad or these things? I kind of think that the answer is no. Right.

[B]

I know he did have a slightly kind of cynical view on politics, which was like, like the best campaign is going to be the one that says to people, I'm going to use AI to make your bananas 10 cents.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think that any. I mean, I would be curious to look back and see how much AI influence and large language models influence people's perspectives on the last election. I imagine it probably doesn't represent very much and people come to their own conclusions outside of AI. But it is an interesting thing to think about and probably will matter more on a local level or with smaller candidates. Places where I think with the general election, the large language models are gonna have plenty of people who are in charge of making sure that people don't put their thumb on the scale. But I think that for smaller races, right. Ones that people are paying less attention to, I think that AI could play a real role in shaping people's opinions in that way.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's right. And honestly, his being so worried about it makes me a little worried.

[A]

Yeah, that's true. Well, it was really fun to have him on, so. So thanks for convincing him and nailing him down. We had to move it around a few times.

[B]

He was not hard to convince. I sent him a note saying come on our podcast in the subject line and he was like, sure, cc My assistant gives an easy booking.

[A]

Well, that is it for us this week. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from Semaphore. Our show is produced by Sheena Ozaki, with special thanks this week to Chris McCloud, Josh Billinson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor this week is Kevin o'. Leary. Kevin, what did you think about what Mark had to say? Come on our show. Would we like to have him? I don't really know. Ben, what do you think?

[B]

I don't know. Maybe on a slow week.

[A]

Maybe on a slow week.

[B]

Sorry, this is just now insulting. Sorry, sorry. Kevin, would be nice to have you on. If you like the show, please do follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

And if you still want more, you can always ways subscribe to Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night. Send us a tip. Send us an idea for something to write about.

[B]

Send scoops.

[A]

Send scoops. Please do.