Jensen Huang, the head of the world’s most successful AI company, says the tech won’t take your job, but it might create some strange new ones.
Many, including Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called “godfather of AI,” have warned that AI’s rapid evolution could trigger mass unemployment and deepen inequality.
In an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” published on Wednesday, Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, took a more optimistic view, saying he thinks jobs that are greater than the sum of their tasks will survive.
“The question is, what is the job?” Huang said. “Your job has to be more than the task.”
He pointed to radiologists as an example of a job that won’t be superseded by AI.
AI can now scan images more efficiently than humans, yet the number of radiologists isn’t shrinking, he said. The reason for that, according to Huang, is that the purpose of radiologists is to diagnose disease, not to study an image.
“The image studying is simply a task in service of diagnosing the disease,” he said.
Huang acknowledged that purely task-based jobs will likely be replaced by automation, adding that it “could be a lot of people.”
“If your job is just to chop vegetables, Cuisinart’s [the kitchen gadget company] gonna replace you,” he told Rogan.
However, the Nvidia CEO also predicted that entirely new industries and jobs will emerge as AI continues to develop, raising one of his big obsessions: robots.
When robots enter the mainstream, society will need “a whole new industry of technicians and people who have to manufacture the robots,” Huang said, including one particularly unusual new job role.
“You’re gonna have robot apparel … because I want my robot to look different than your robot, so you’re gonna have a whole apparel industry for robots,” Huang told Rogan while laughing.
When pressed by Rogan if he thought such jobs would be done by other robots, Huang added: “Eventually.”
Huang’s comments echo those of other CEOs who have said that the robot revolution will create whole new jobs previously unthought of.
In November, David Risher, CEO of ride-hailing firm Lyft, said that the rise of robotaxis could lead to the rise of the “car-tender.”
“I think there will be fun things that people are going to be doing in the cars that are not just driving. It’s making drinks, it’s telling stories, it’s being the local guy,” Risher said on a podcast.
No one knows the ultimate goal of AI
In another segment of the podcast, Huang acknowledged that he doesn’t know where the new technology he’s racing to help develop will end up, or what AI’s ultimate goal is.
“I don’t think anybody really knows,” Huang said. “I think it’s probably going to be much more gradual than we think. It won’t be a moment. It won’t be as if somebody arrived and nobody else has.”
Huang said that he was optimistic about where AI is headed. Historically, he said, society has always been wary of new technology, but those concerns tend to fuel progress rather than hinder it. In AI’s case, he said, that caution is actively shaping safer, more reliable systems.
“If history is a guide, it is the case that all of this concern is channeled into making the technology safer,” Huang said.
AI has developed to the point where it conducts research before answering, reflects on its responses, and utilizes tools to provide a better solution — all of which has helped reduce hallucinations, the Nvidia CEO said.
“If you look at what we’re going to do with the next thousand times of performance in AI, a lot of it is going to be channeled toward more reflection, more research, thinking about the answer more deeply.”
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