Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Sep 3 (IANS) Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang says he does not need to keep working.
He simply cannot bear the thought of missing what artificial intelligence (AI) could deliver over the next decade.
“I’ve been working a long time and Surely I don’t have to work, but I don’t want to miss, I’m definitely not going to miss the next 10, 15 years,” Huang said during a fireside chat with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
For Huang, the appeal lies not only in the technology but also in the scale of the ambitions it has unleashed.
“The ambition of the industry, the ambition of my colleagues, my own ambition has really been supercharged,” he said.
Huang offered a buoyant vision of an AI-powered future in which work that once took a decade could be completed in a year, while year-long projects could be finished within a month.
“What do I expect in the next five, ten years? Things that take ten years are going to take one. Things that take one will take a month,” he added.
The Nvidia Chief said that artificial intelligence was giving ordinary people, companies and countries the ability to tackle problems on a scale previously considered unimaginable.
“It is now possible for average humans like ourselves to think that we can make an impact on a hundred trillion dollar industry,” Huang added.
He said that innovators were talking about adding between $20 trillion and $50 trillion in economic benefits worldwide.
Such ideas, he added, reflected a new level of ambition made possible by access to AI.
“No time in history have we been able to say things like that,” he said.
Huang encouraged countries to approach the technology with optimism and raise their ambitions rather than allow uncertainty to dominate the public conversation.
“This is the time when you have to feel enlightened, inspired, supercharged, lifted, because you now have this incredible technology behind you,” he said.
He compared the development of AI with earlier technological advances that initially appeared almost magical.
“Electricity once made it possible to turn on a light from far away, while modern cars and aircraft became safer as their technology improved.”
AI, Huang said, would similarly advance through engineering, mathematics, software and responsible development.
He rejected predictions that the technology would simply remove human workers.
AI would automate certain skills and tasks, he said, but people would retain the purpose, context and meaning that define their jobs.
Huang also described AI as a great equaliser because people could now communicate with computers through ordinary human language.
Lutnick picked up that theme, suggesting that the technology could place advanced knowledge within everyone’s reach.
“You now can have… A PhD in everything. That’s right. At your fingertips,” Lutnick said.
“You are that person now. Right? Everybody is that person now,” Huang responded.
Lutnick praised Huang’s optimistic assessment and called him “an American treasure”, saying Nvidia was leading the United States towards a future once confined largely to science fiction.
“Your company is leading us in a path that none of us, when we were young, ever dreamed possible,” the US Commerce Secretary said.
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its President and Chief Executive since its inception.
The company began as a specialist in graphics technology before its processors became vital to the development and operation of modern artificial intelligence systems.
Born in Taiwan, Huang moved to the United States as a child and studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University and Stanford University.
Under his leadership, Nvidia has grown into one of the world’s most valuable technology companies.
–IANS
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