As workers worry about AI, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says AI is ‘creating a lot of jobs’

When it comes to the specter of AI’s potential to transform the workforce, Jensen Huang thinks the American worker has nothing to fear. during conversation Hosted by the Milken Institute, an economic policy think tank, on Monday night with MSNBC’s Becky Quick, the jovial Nvidia CEO said that artificial intelligence is an industry-wide job generator, not the harbinger of mass unemployment that “AI doomsayers” often charge.

A number of different topics were discussed during the conversation, but a recurring theme was the ongoing economic concern surrounding the AI ​​industry and whether or not it’s something Americans should legitimately be concerned about. At one point, Quick noted, “It’s happening very quickly. Is there a greater dislocation than we’ve seen in the past, leading to greater inequality? And what are we going to do about it?”

Throughout the night, Huang struck an optimistic note. “AI creates jobs,” Huang said during the discussion, adding that “AI is America’s best opportunity to re-industrialize itself.” Huang noted that the AI ​​industry is fueled by a new kind of industrial factories — the kind that produce equipment that serves as critical infrastructure for the AI ​​business. (Huang’s company, in particular, sells much of this equipment.) These factories definitely need workers, as does the rest of the booming AI industry.

Just because a specific task is automated doesn’t mean a person’s entire job will be replaced, Huang reasoned. People who believe this “misunderstand that a job’s purpose and a job’s task are related,” but ultimately they are not the same thing, he said. In other words, Huang’s argument is that even if AI takes over a discrete task within a role, the broader function the employee serves in the organization will remain.

Relatedly, Huang criticized people who claim that artificial intelligence will dominate humanity or destroy large sectors of the economy. “What worries me the most is that we … people — all the people we’re telling these science fiction stories to, AI is not so popular in the United States, or people are so afraid of it that they don’t really do it,” he said.

Ironically, much of the “scare” rhetoric is created By the AI ​​industry itselfand critics argue that such hyperbole has been used as a marketing ploy designed to generate buzz and excitement for products that do not come close to the possibilities such rhetoric suggests.

It remains to be seen what long-term impact AI will have on the overall economy. However, reputable financial and academic organizations have suggested it up to 15% of jobs It will be eliminated in the next few years as a result of artificial intelligence in the United States.