Jensen Huang: AI’s impact will be ‘largely wonderful’

It will be largely optimistic, largely wonderful. There are some cases we have to be extremely careful about, as with all great technology. If you look at the progress of technology over the years — electricity, internet, computers, automobile — you cannot accept that in each one of those cases there are situations and cases we have to be very careful about. As the creators of this technology, the industry has to be mindful, thoughtful, rigorous about building and advancing this technology properly. This is the first technology in my generation where we invented a new computer technology where it's easier to access than not. For example, the computer until now has been programmable for about 30 million people in the world. About 30 million of us know how to program it and apply it to some useful career. Now everybody in the world can program AI and go up to it and say, 'I would like to ask you to do something.' If you're not sure how to use AI, you tell the AI, 'I do not know how to use AI, tell me how to use AI. How do I write a program? Book a trip? Do research?' Because the technology divide tremendously, and that is something that is important to recognize.

Let's use one example. I grew up in a generation where we did not have calculators. I don't remember the last time I did long division. We don't have to do algebra anymore because we don't do calculus. All of those things are now done by computers. Somehow everything that I grew up learning is now replaced by computers, and I still find myself insanely busy and working as hard as ever. The purpose of jobs have not fundamentally changed. The purpose of a doctor has not changed. It is to help diagnose disease, bring wellness. The tools they use to do that job will be different.

In the next ten or 15 years we will be building a lot of infrastructure. The first thing that has happened is because of AI, the number of new trip plans and computer plans and data center plans that are being created around the country has grown tremendously. Electricians, construction, welders, technicians, networking engineers — all of these jobs are now in huge demand. We created half a billion of them, we will probably make more. The reindustrialization will change culture. We will have a lot more construction workers, a lot more builders and makers, which is fantastic.

I think some jobs will change, some will not be necessary. A whole lot more jobs will be created if it is the case that productivity creates more jobs. Just go back and look at history. 150 years of documented history that the Industrial Revolution as productivity enhanced, as it gained, as we created new technology that made it impossible for us not to do the things that we did yesterday, they created a lot of new things. Somebody was mentioning the other day that technology made it so you didn't have to do laundry, the laundromats. I don't remember that, but that job was replaced by washing machines. It was replaced by washing machines, but a whole new industry of consumer appliances was created.

Let's see. First of all, they get wrong that the technology is hard to use. They get wrong that technology somehow is going to affect them instead of technology they should use themselves to elevate themselves. I think that the stories that have been told about AI, especially the jobs that are being replaced — for example radiology, or nursing, so many different types of examples — are proven completely opposite. The fact that AI was going to eliminate software engineers' jobs by now, that apparently nobody should go into software engineering because their jobs will be unnecessary, all of that is completely wrong. Imagine this: the question is, just — your child, who is a freshman in college, what advice do you give them about AI? To avoid it and ignore it? To run away from it, or to engage it? So of course you would advise they would engage it. Why is that? Because you love your children and you want them to succeed and you want them to use technology to elevate their capabilities.