Nvidia CEO Says AI Job Automation Doesn’t Equal Job Losses

Nvidia’s CEO has reportedly dismissed fears that AI will replace the American worker.

“AI creates jobs,” Jensen Huang argued in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick Monday (May 4) evening.

In comments from the event at the Milken Institute that were reported by TechCrunch, the CEO added that AI is the U.S.’s “best opportunity to re-industrialize” itself.

Huang contended that the automation of one specific task doesn’t mean a worker’s job will go away. People who think this “misunderstand that the purpose of a job and the task of a job are related” but not the same thing, he said.

According to the report, Huang was critical of people who claim AI will dominate humanity or erase huge sectors of the economy.

“My greatest concern is that we scare … people — all the people that we’re telling these science-fiction stories to, to the point where AI is so unpopular in the United States, or people are so afraid of it, that they don’t actually engage it,” he said.

The TechCrunch report notes that most of what Huang called “doomer” rhetoric about AI has come from the AI industry, leading critics to suggest that these claims are nothing more than a marketing tactic to create buzz around products that aren’t as powerful as such statements would indicate.

Huang’s comments come amid a string of recent AI-related job losses, with several companies — most recently CoinBase — citing the tech when announcing layoffs.

But as PYMNTS has written, while job cuts tied to AI invariably bring about fears of a larger employment crisis, current labor research suggests a much more complicated situation.

For example, the World Economic Forum has argued that while automation and AI will eliminate the need for certain tasks, they will also pave the way for new categories of work, particularly in data, AI oversight, cybersecurity and human-centric services.

The report stressed that this will lead to a time of transition but not a permanent contraction. Many workers’ skills are expected to evolve over the next five years, which will require retraining and adaptation.

“The pressure is real, but it is directional,” PYMNTS added. “Roles centered on routine information processing are most exposed. Roles combining domain expertise, judgment and technological fluency are expanding.”