Count Me on Team Jensen

Universal Basic Income? AI use taxes? Some in Silicon Valley are bracing for mass human obsolescence. But NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang — and history — tell a very different story.

Axios Details Two Competing Visions

Axios published another great, deep dive interview this morning with a leader in the AI space. This morning – Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO.

This comes on the heels of their interview a  few weeks back of Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, who warned of a white-collar job bloodbath and called for, among other things, an AI use tax with the funds going to support a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to support displaced workers from AI and automation.

I offered my own opinions on Amodei’s take when his interview came out, and let’s just say I was not impressed. As I said:

But I just can’t see that any government program, rather than the power of markets and people seeking their own best interest (as they perceive them), billions of times over will address this, just as past technological innovations have disrupted or even destroyed whole industries before.

Over time, the creative innovation, destruction, and reinvention caused by the power of markets has always outlasted government’s ability to “solve” problems or manage the economy.

Markets Beat Mandates

Instead, AI, just like any other radical innovation, will just empower entrepreneurs and leaders to increase productivity and do more. The lazy and satisfied may do what Amodei suggests and just slash workforces and capture increased margins. But the true leaders will capture that productivity, reinvest it in their enterprises just as every cycle of innovation has allowed, and grow their companies even more.

This much more optimistic view is reflected in Huang’s interview today, who says:

"If we have no new ideas," Huang began, "and the work that we're doing is precisely all that needs to be done ... and no more than what humanity will ever need, then when we become more productive, [Amodei's warning would be] absolutely correct — we will need fewer people doing that work."

"However, if you now look at history and you ask yourself: 'Do I have more ideas so that, if I were to be more productive, I could do more?' Then, you would describe a condition that reflects human history — that we have become more productive over time."

"We've become more productive raising crops," Huang continued, noting that it's not like all of a sudden, as a result of mechanization, "everybody ran out of work."

Everyone's jobs will change," he said. "Some jobs will be unnecessary. Some people will lose jobs. But many new jobs will be created. ... The world will be more productive. There will be higher GDP [gross domestic product, or total national output]. There will be more jobs. But every job will be augmented by AI."

Count me 100% on Team Jensen!

The Cycle of Disruption and Reinvention

History has shown, time and time again, that each technological leap forward has not destroyed the economy or broken the model. Have there been individual classes of disruption? Of course. But that is the beauty of free markets. The miracle that billions and trillions of individual decisions and transactions and efforts to improve the lives of people and those they care about, allocated resources and drives the economy forward far better than any top-down, command economy.  

Those that make good decisions, especially in response to changing environments, thrive. Those that don’t, suffer consequences, and try again. They see what others have done and adjust their plans. Or they team up with the others who have successfully adapted and thrived. And this cycle repeated over the whole world, brings all the innovation that makes Amodei’s vision the false one.

Team Jensen Bets on Human Potential

As Huang said, if we expect that everything we do today is all we will ever have to do, then an increase in productivity will mean disruption on an epic scale – the Amodei vision. But the sum of human history shows that we as a species are never satisfied with “what we do today.”

50,000 years ago or more, “what we do today” was basic survival. Now, we span the globe, live lives of unimaginable miracles, and dream of conquering the stars. From fire to the wheel to agriculture to electricity and on and on, through today’s revolutions, humans have never stopped setting ever bigger sights of “what can we do.” Jensen Huang gets that much better than Dario Amodei.

It’s what makes us human. It’s what drives us. Are you Team Jensen or Team Dario? My choice is clear. Let’s go.