As workers worry about AI, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says AI is ‘creating a huge number of jobs’

When it comes to the idea of ​​AI’s power to displace workers, Jensen Huang thinks the American worker has nothing to fear. In an interview Monday evening with MSNBC’s Becky Quick hosted by the Milken Institute – an economic policy think tank, the chief executive of Nvidia said that AI is an industrial generator of jobs, not an indicator of the mass unemployment that the so-called “AI doomers” often suspect.

Many different topics were covered during the speech, but the theme that kept coming back was the ongoing economic concerns surrounding the AI ​​industry and whether it is something Americans should legitimately be concerned about. At one point Quick commented: “This is happening very quickly. Is there a bigger shift than we’ve seen in the past leading to greater inequality? And what are we doing about that?”

Throughout the night, Huang gave an optimistic note. “AI is creating jobs,” Huang said during the interview, adding that “AI [the] It’s the best chance for the United States to re-industrialize.” Huang noted that the AI ​​industry is being powered by a new type of industrial factories—the kind that produce the hardware that serves as the critical infrastructure for an AI business.

Just because some work is automated, that doesn’t mean all human work will be replaced, Huang thought. People who believe this “misunderstand that the purpose of work and work are related” but not the same thing in the end. In other words, Huang’s argument is that even if AI takes on a different role within a specific role, the broader work that an employee does in an organization is likely to remain.

Relatedly, Huang was critical of people who claim that AI will dominate humanity or destroy large sectors of the economy. “My biggest concern is that we’re scaring…people—all the people we’re telling these science fiction stories to, to the point that AI is not very popular in the United States, or people are so afraid, that they don’t participate in it,” he said.

Ironically, much of the “doomer” talk has been generated by the AI ​​industry itself, and critics conclude that such hyperbole has been used as a marketing gimmick designed to generate buzz and excitement for products that are nowhere near the capabilities being touted.

It remains to be seen what kind of long-term impact AI will have on the economy as a whole. That said, respected financial and academic organizations have suggested that approximately 15 percent of jobs in the US will be eliminated in the next few years due to AI.