Nvidia boss sees a future where humans will become tailors for robots: “There will be a whole industry”
Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, is one of the “techno-optimists” who does not expect a sudden wave of layoffs due to the replacement of humans with artificial intelligence (AI) tools. But even he argues that technology will drastically change the labor market, creating new roles, including tailors for robots, reports Fortune magazine.
Huang said in an interview with Joe Rogan for his podcast that the jobs most resistant to the effect of the gradual adoption of artificial intelligence will be those that involve more than just routine tasks.
“If your job is just to cut vegetables, Cuisinart will replace you,” Huang said, referring to the American brand of kitchen appliances.
On the other hand, some professions, such as radiologists, might be safe because their role is not just to perform scans, but mostly to interpret those images to make diagnoses.
“Image analysis is simply a task in the service of disease diagnosis,” he explained.
Nvidia boss says people will want their robots to be different from everyone else's
Huang admitted that some jobs will disappear, although he avoided using the harsh language of other prominent tech figures such as Geoffrey Hinton, one of the so-called “godfathers of artificial intelligence”, or Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI company Anthropic.
Both have previously predicted a massive loss of jobs due to the improvement of AI tools.
Still, the AI-dominated labor market that Huang envisions will also bring new jobs. These could include new demand for technicians to help build and maintain future “AI assistants,” but also new fields.
“You're going to have robot clothing, so a whole industry, right? Because I want my robot to look different than your robot,” Huang told Joe Rogan. “So there's going to be a whole fashion industry for robots,” pointed out the head of Nvidia, the world's most valuable company by market value.
Huang and Elon Musk focus on 'physical artificial intelligence'
The idea of AI-powered robots taking over jobs previously held by humans may have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago, but some of the world's leading technology companies are already trying to make it a reality.
And Nvidia is among them. Jensen Huang interviewed Rogan last December. Fortune magazine has now brought his comments back into focus as Huang told Nvidia's big developer convention this week that so-called “physical artificial intelligence” — specifically robotics — is the next trillion-dollar-plus market for the company he runs.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has been saying for several years that the humanoid robot Optimus is a central pillar of the company's future business strategy. In the long term, Musk imagines that Tesla will turn from a car manufacturer into a company whose main business will be the construction of robots.
Journalists from Fortune magazine believe that AI technology is advancing so rapidly that it already has the potential to replace millions of jobs, and recall that a recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that AI can adequately perform tasks equivalent to about 12% of US jobs.
Even the hypothetical job of designing clothes for robots might not be a lasting one. Asked by Rogan if robots could eventually end up creating clothing for other robots, Huang replied: “Eventually, yes. And then something else will come along.”
