As employees worry about AI, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says AI ‘creates huge numbers of jobs’

Regarding AI’s potential to replace labor, Jensen Huang believes American workers have nothing to fear. In a conversation with MSNBC’s Becky Quick on Monday night hosted by the Milken Institute, an economic policy think tank, the cheerful Nvidia CEO said AI is an industrial-scale job creation, not a harbinger of the mass unemployment that the so-called “AI Doomer” has often denounced.

A variety of topics were covered during the conversation, but the central theme that kept coming up was the ongoing economic anxiety surrounding the AI ​​industry and whether that’s something Americans should legitimately be worried about. At one point, Quick noted, “This is happening so fast. Are there larger dislocations that are causing greater inequality than we’ve seen in the past? And what should we do about it?”

Throughout the night, Huang sounded optimistic. “AI creates jobs,” Huang argued during the debate, adding, “AI is America’s best opportunity to reindustrialize.” Huang pointed out that the AI ​​industry is driven by a new type of industrial factory, the kind that produces hardware that serves as critical infrastructure for AI businesses. (Hwang’s company sells a lot of that hardware in particular.) Like the rest of the blossoming AI industry, these factories will definitely need workers.

Huang reasoned that just because a particular task is automated doesn’t mean the entire work of an individual will be replaced. People who believe this “misunderstand that the purpose of work and the tasks of work are related,” but ultimately they are not the same thing, he said. In other words, Huang’s argument is that even if AI takes on distinct tasks within a role, the broader functions that employees perform in an organization will likely remain the same.

In this regard, Huang criticized those who claim that AI will dominate humanity or sweep away huge sectors of the economy. “My biggest concern is that we’re scaring all the people we’re telling science fiction stories about, either AI is unpopular in America or they’re afraid of AI to the point where they don’t actually engage with it,” he said.

Ironically, much of the “catastrophe” rhetoric was generated by the AI ​​industry itself, with critics arguing that such hyperbole was used as a marketing ploy designed to generate buzz and excitement about products that fall nowhere near the capabilities the rhetoric suggests.

It remains to be seen what long-term impact AI will have on the overall economy. That said, reputable financial and academic institutions have suggested that up to 15% of American jobs will be lost in the next few years as a result of AI.