SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 18: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address during the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center on March 18, 2024 in San Jose, California. The developer conference is expected to highlight new chip, software, and AI processor technology. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Getty Images
“The more intelligent people I’m surrounded by, the more geniuses I’m surrounded by, surprisingly, the more ideas I have, the more problems I imagine.” Those are the words of Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang from a recent conversation on the BG2 Podcast with Brad Gerstner and Clark Tang. Nvidia itself has always vivified Huang’s words given its longstanding reputation for having the best employees in Silicon Valley.
What’s important is that Huang is bringing the genius he’s long surrounded himself with to the rest of the world. Stop and think about that. It’s so common to focus on the wealth attained by the visionaries, but less common to think about how they’ve achieved and are achieving wealth.
As Huang explains it, “Suppose I were to hire a hundred-thousand-dollar employee, and I augmented that hundred-thousand-dollar employee with a ten-thousand-dollar AI.”… “And that ten-thousand-dollar AI as a result made the hundred-thousand-dollar employee twice more productive, three times more productive. Would I do it? Heartbeat. I’m doing it across every single person in our company right now.”
It’s useful to stop right there and contemplate the meaning of machines that do and crucially think for the humans at Nvidia, but it’s not technological advance if relatively few are advancing. In Huang’s case, he asked Gerstner and Tang to “apply the NVIDIA story to the world’s GDP.” Which speaks to where this is going.
It’s not solely Huang’s aim to improve the performance of the elite individuals in his employ, it’s about bridging the global technological divide in ways that would render the genius of universal internet access somewhat tame by comparison. In Huang’s words, AI is “the ultimate equalizer.” While OpenAI can presently lay claim to 800 million active users, Huang views this remarkable leap over the last three years as woefully inadequate relative to where things could be. He believes OpenAI’s global market penetration “really really needs to be six billion. Yeah. Right? It really needs to be eight billion soon.”
Which requires readers to think more about the possibilities of such a scenario. Gerstner plainly has. Looking back through history, he comments that “For two thousand years, basically GDP did not grow. Okay? And then we get the industrial revolution. GDP accelerates. We get the digital revolution, GDP accelerates.” Yes to all, which means we can say with some confidence that we’re on the verge of a much bigger economic leap. In Gerstner’s words to Huang about AI’s potential: “Basically what you’re saying is the world’s GDP growth is going to accelerate because now we are giving the world billions of coworkers that will do work for us.” Yes!
More automation and more automated thought don’t threaten workers anymore than extra workers in the pin factory Adam Smith visited in the 18th century, or the factories Henry Ford designed in the early 20th century threatened workers. Quite the opposite. Extra human hands were always an input in much the same way that billions of automated hands and minds will be an input in the present and future. When machines can do and think for humans, humans can specialize their own doing and thinking to their substantial betterment
One man working along in the pin factory visited by Smith could maybe produce one pin per day, but several men working together could produce tens of thousands. Ford’s relentless addition of specialized workers in his factories made it possible for him to create cars for “the great multitude.”
Thinking about the bigger, long-term meaning of universal human access to what Gerstner describes as “billions of automated coworkers” to divide up work and thought with, the future has the potential to render the present sickeningly impoverished by comparison. Which is a comment that Huang’s deep belief in an American Dream that he individually embodies is global in scope. It won’t just be Americans working exponentially more capably thanks to universal access to AI, it will be the world.
Considering all of this through the prism of Africa, the possibilities for a continent long defined by abject poverty are more than intriguing. Which is the beauty of commercial advance. So long as markets are open, it’s as though every corporate innovation is happening right next door. Genius coworkers lifting American boats will similarly lift African activity whereby software that Huang describes as “writing all the time” and thinking all the time is being transmitted globally all the time. While Silicon Valley’s internet advances brought information to the world as that same internet figuratively shrunk it, AI promises to deliver Silicon Valley’s doing and thinking capabilities in next door fashion to the whole world.
Just briefly stop and imagine the economic meaning for historically struggling West Virginia alone if the technological talent in Silicon Valley (think the employees, investors, and giants with names like Brin, Ellison, Huang and Zuckerberg) were transported to Charleston, Clarksburg, and Lewisburg. To say that the economic transformation of all three would be profound insults understatement, but it rates thought as function and thought by billions and trillions of hands and brains is globalized. It’s no reach to say that poverty will have finally met its match.
It calls for more thought about the American Dream. Gerstner cites Abraham Lincoln’s expressed view that the latter was and is about “the right to rise.” Gerstner might agree that Huang’s description of it is even better. He told Gerstner and Tang that, “America has one a singular brand reputation that no country in the world has, and no country in the world is in the position or in the horizon to be able to say, come to America and realize the American dream. What country has the word dream behind it?” Absolutely.
Which calls for readers to stop and contemplate the truth in the dream if access to working and thinking genius is democratized. Again, what if operational and thought capabilities presently in Silicon Valley are soon enough in Spokane. It will be about more than the right to rise, and the U.S.’s brand quality will be about achievement possibilities quite a bit grander than they already are. Just the same, and as discussed in paragraphs leading up to this one, the Americanization of advance will be felt in globalized fashion. It’s a future that can’t be minimized, but critics of Huang and his conversation with Gerstner and Tang are predictably trying to minimize it.
That’s because Huang had the temerity to say what’s true, that decoupling from China “doesn’t make any sense at all. Decoupling is exactly the wrong concept.” Huang is right. Decoupling makes no sense. Crucial here is that the myriad “China hawks” in Washington, DC should understand this best.
To see why, it’s worth remembering that before China bashing, tariffs and export controls became voguish notions in a Washington that should know better, Nvidia was thriving in China. As Huang relayed it on BG2, Nvidia had “Ninety five percent market share.” It’s worth understanding why Nvidia did, beyond the brilliance of its technology.
Gerstner arguably hit on the why beyond Nvidia’s former dominance in China best: “I heard from a Chinese researcher leading one of our leading labs in the U.S. that three years ago, ninety percent of the top AI researchers graduating from universities in China wanted to come to the United States and did come to the United States.” Well, exactly. It’s the brand referenced by Huang in addition to the opportunities. It’s the “right to rise” about the U.S. recognized globally, and that all too many correctly tie to U.S. freedoms. Nvidia’s technology just added to the brand value of anything from the United States. U.S. freedom sells because it’s associated with top of the mark advance. Which is a long way of saying that whatever the opinions of the U.S. held by China’s political class, the Chinese people see America and its dreams in the properly lofty way that Huang does.
Unfortunately, Gerstner’s anecdote about the Chinese researcher didn’t stop at an overwhelming, 90 percent desire among China’s best and brightest to get to the U.S. The same researcher went on to tell Gerstner that presently it’s “closer to ten or fifteen percent.” Worse, in consideration of the oft-expressed desire of the China hawks to beat China, tariffs and export controls from the U.S. played right into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) hands. Yes, with the imposition of tariffs and export controls by China hawks stateside, Nvidia lost its 95 percent market share to Huawei and other Chinese companies only too glad to prosper in a country that backward-thinking political types in the U.S. won’t presently allow Nvidia to fully compete in.
All of which reduces the likelihood of the U.S. “winning” any kind of AI race. How could it if it can’t access some of the world’s best technological minds, minds that happen to be based in China. See Adam Smith’s pin factory once again, or Ford’s factories. Humans are not a job taken or an insight stolen, they’re additive. See the Huang quote that opens this opinion piece: “the more geniuses I’m surrounded by, surprisingly, the more ideas I have, the more problems I imagine.” Yes! American innovation is the world’s greatest precisely because Americans have long been free to work with talented people the world over who were all-too-eager to work with them.
Gerstner plainly knows all this well. As he puts it, commercial interaction with the Chinese is hugely additive to American advance “Because it allows us to tap into half of the world’s AI engineers, keeping them, you know, in this ecosystem.” As you read this, try to always keep the pin factory in mind, particularly as you read Huang’s comment that followed Gerstner’s: “I believe that it is in the best interest of China that Nvidia is able to serve that market and compete in that market. I fundamentally believe it’s in the best interest of China. It is, of course, fantastic interest in the fantastic interest of the United States.” Yes, precisely. For a sports equivalent of the truths expressed by Gerstner and Huang, just ask how good the Dodgers and Yankees would be absent the ability to tap into the talent in the Dominican Republic and Japan. What should be obvious is that commerce is no different.
No doubt it’s true that China’s economic condition will be enhanced by collaboration with the U.S., but so will the U.S.’s. Crucial about all this for the hawks is that economic growth is a national security imperative. Huang put it well in his BG2 discussion: “If we can grow economically, we will be strong militarily.”
At which point it can’t be stressed enough that capitalism is colorblind. What’s sad is that America’s China hawks are many in the America’s conservative movement, and conservatives most prone to skepticism about freely arrived at economic engagement in China have always understood this: in a merit-based system race and nationality go out in the window.
Of course, the challenge for U.S.-based AI advances in the future is that absent an ability for Nvidia and the rest to fully compete in China, the effect stateside will be of U.S. genius competing with the proverbial arm tied behind its back. Huang understands this all too well. The more that genius tessellates, the more progress there is. A great deal of genius is based in China, which means the U.S.’s AI achievement and the growth associated with it will necessarily be limited by governmental efforts stateside to compete in China, and in competing in China, availing itself of the talent there.
What’s disappointing is that for recognizing the historical correlation between economic growth and national security, and the importance of competing against the best of the best in China while aggressively recruiting China’s best, Huang is being criticized yet again by hawkish types who oddly (and dangerously) tie economic integration to national insecurity. Huang plainly disagrees, though minus the ad hominems. Addressing hawkish U.S. elements during his discussion with Gerstner and Tang, Huang observed that “they [China hawks] want what’s in the best interest of our country,” we all do. The difference is that Huang feels that limits on competition in China in concert with limits on the ability of U.S. corporations to recruit China’s best are the stuff of “existential crisis.” Which should be tautological.
About midway through his BG2 discussion, Huang observed that “nobody needs atomic bombs. Everybody needs AI.” Yes! And if everybody gets AI, national security will be greatly enhanced simply because the costs of something as brutally enervating as war will increase. What’s important in thinking about the latter is that people drive progress, and the more people work together, the more progress there is.
This can’t be said enough as hawkish elements in the U.S. call for severing economic relations between the U.S. and China. Jensen Huang clearly and correctly sees the economic and national security-debasing qualities of such a desire, and is thankfully relaying them to the world. His views don’t rate critique, but they do rate serious thought if the U.S. is to lead the AI future while enhancing its freedoms by virtue of it being a leader.
Disclaimer: This news has been automatically collected from the source link above. Our website does not create, edit, or publish the content. All information, statements, and opinions expressed belong solely to the original publisher. We are not responsible or liable for the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of any news, nor for any statements, views, or claims made in the content. All rights remain with the respective source.