Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says nobody really knows the risks of AI as he pours billions into tech race
Joe Rogan was stunned minutes into his conversation the world’s most valuable CEO, who made a claim about AI that briefly left the room silent.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says even the world’s leading tech magnates don’t yet understand the implications of artificial intelligence, even as they pour trillions into the global technological arms race.
Huang, who fronts the most valuable company in history, appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast overnight to admit that he doesn’t think anybody “really knows” what lies at the end of the AI marathon.
The pair delved into AI competition, global power structures and the accelerating capabilities of modern systems in a two-and-a-half-hour mind-melter of a podcast.
Huang opened the discussion by framing AI development as part of a long continuum of high-stakes technological competition. As with most tech CEOs with billions at stake in the current, Huang is highly defensive and attempts to rationalise the industry’s rabid push towards development, even while admitting it is an event horizon that nobody can see over.
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Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company almost overnight because it powers the AI frenzy, with its GPUs and AI-chips becoming indispensable for everything from large-language models to cloud computing, driving investor demand so high that its market valuation shot past US$5 trillion (AU$7.57 trillion).
“We just took the technology and ran with it. And so I think we were always in a bit of a technology race,” Huang said. “World War II was a technology race. The Manhattan Project was a technology race. We’ve been in the technology race ever since during the Cold War. I think we’re still in a technology race.
“It is probably the single most important race.
“It is the technology (that) gives you superpowers, you know, whether it’s information superpowers or energy superpowers or military superpowers, is all founded in technology, and so technology leadership is really important.”
Rogan pointed out that the high stakes of the AI race have left many people on edge. He referred to Elon Musk’s famous quote, saying it’s a one-in-five chance that the AI race ends badly. Where he got that figure is anybody’s guess.
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And yet billions around the world
“It seems like with the AI race, people are very nervous about it, like you know, Elon has famously said there was like 80 per cent chance it’s awesome, 20 per cent chance we’re in trouble, and people are worried about that 20 per cent, rightly so,” Rogan said.
Rogan argued his point further, putting it to Huang that reaching advanced AI first is inherently a matter of national security.
“When we’re working towards this ultimate goal of AI, it’s just impossible to imagine that it wouldn’t be of national security interest to get there first,” he said.
The problem is that nobody knows where “there” actually is.
“I’m not sure. And I don’t think anybody I don’t think anybody really knows,” Huang said.
“If I ask you, you’re the head of Nvidia. If you don’t know what’s there, who knows?” Rogan replied.
Huang responded that the AI tipping point is unlikely to arrive in a single dramatic leap.
“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 I don’t think it’s going to be like that,” he said.
“I think it’s going to be things that just get better and better and better and better just like technology does.”
Huang, a man making billions off the latest boom, said societies have always met emerging technologies with a mix of fear and adaptation.
“Humanity has always been concerned about new technology,” he said. “There are always some people who are thinking, there are always a lot of people who are quite concerned … and so if history is a guide, it is the case that all of this concern is channelled into making the technology safer.”
He claims that recent leaps in AI capability have largely been directed toward increasing reliability rather than risk.
“In the last several years, I would say AI technology has increased probably in the last two years alone, maybe a 100x,” he said. “So AI is 100 times more capable today.”
“We directed it to cause the AI to be able to think … It does research before it answers. And so it grounds it on truth. If it’s not certain about the answer or highly confident about the answer, it’ll go back and do more research. It might actually even use a tool because that tool provides a better solution than it could hallucinate itself.”
“As a result, we channelled it into having it produce a safer result, a safer answer, a more truthful answer. The amount of hallucination has reduced.”
Originally published as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says nobody really knows the risks of AI as he pours billions into tech race
