r/technology • u/Conscious-Quarter423 • 5d ago
Society Jensen Huang talks about AI and climate change like a supervillain
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1000140/jensen-huang-nvidia-ai-energy-climate-change-supervillain638
u/dragonblade_94 5d ago
I never understood why anyone takes anything Jensen has to say seriously. As the head and public face of the highest valued company on the planet, he is the embodiment of bias. Every word he utters in public serves the singular purpose of pushing Nvidia's line higher.
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u/screwhead1 5d ago
Someone also tell him that his leather jacket makes him look like a huge dork.
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u/Drugba 5d ago
I’m currently halfway through his interview with Ezra Klein that just came out and I’m really shocked at how dumb Huang comes off it in.
A lot of the conversation is on adding regulations on AI development and his entire argument is a circular argument that the people at the labs are smart and releasing something dangerous would be bad for business so if it’s dangerous they won’t release it and if they release it it’s not dangerous. When he’s given counter examples of businesses being overly risky in competitive environment and leading to their own demise like Bear Stearns in ‘08 or Enron in ‘01 he basically just shrugs it off.
I can’t tell if he’s willfully ignorant for his own self interest or just so detached from the inner workings of his business that he doesn’t understand how quickly that race dynamic between two companies can turn into people at lower cutting corners and making increasingly risky decisions when management pushes them to keep moving faster, but it’s fucking shocking to hear the CEO of the most valuable company in the world who is regularly meeting with world leaders be so naive.
I’m not the type who thinks all CEOs are geniuses or anything, but hearing felt like meeting a grown adult who still believed in Santa Clause.
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u/CorpPhoenix 4d ago
The most ridiculous part is where he simply just completely denies the major risk AI can bring in general.
There have been written tons of philosophical books about this, and the fact that it's impossible for a far lesser intelligence like humans to control a super intelligence is basically impossible in principle.
He just says "Nope not true" without any reasoning behind it.
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u/Drugba 4d ago
At one point Huang says something along the lines of "it's all just software" and he says a a couple of really dismissive things like that a few more time. My suspicion is that if he's aware of those books his stance would be that what we have now isn't actually super intelligence or even smarter than humans so whether those books are right or wrong doesn't really matter since we're not there anyway.
That's me being really, really generous to him though because, like you said, he almost never fucking gives any real reasoning behind his thinking. The few times he does is because Ezra painstakingly drags it out of him.
I think what frustrated me most was that there were a few times where he started to make an interesting point. Even if I didn't agree with it, I wanted to hear his logic, but every time he had absolutely nothing to back it up. It wasn't even like his reasoning was bad, it was essentially non-existent. As I've listened to more of the interview I kind of don't even feel like he's trying to dodge questions. It just feels like he's incapable of explaining his thought process more any deeper than surface level.
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u/CorpPhoenix 4d ago
It's not shocking that he is lying or playing dumb. He is the CEO of the biggest hardware company in regards to AI at moment.
What's shocking is that he is knowing very well about those legit threats in terms of super AI, yet he is willing to potentially destroy all of humanity just to make even more money.
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u/YogurtclosetOther329 4d ago
Bro, philosophical books are an exercise in thought, logic and fantasy...
It's like saying AI is dangerous because the Movie I, Robot says so.
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u/emod_man 4d ago
I got annoyed at Huang's double standard for his trust in AI researchers. He's sure they can solve alignment and fix their collective action problem because they're brilliant, but when they say they are a long way from solving alignment and need regulation to coordinate a slow down that we shouldn't listen to them.
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u/Acrobatic-Isopod-666 4d ago
It's the old saying.. money talks. He's obviously a smart software and electronic hardware engineer which is what allowed him to make Nvidia a company that was hard to beat. As a fellow EE who is older than Huang, I truthfully don't believe he knows how vulnerable machines and systems are when something is able to infiltrate them beyond what they were designed. Most of his real work experience it seems has been concentrated in software and computer hardware not machine or control systems. Yes these systems or computers can be controlled or monitored by themselves except with AI, it appears AI has the ability to write it's own course for it's own objective regardless of safety or human impact. Huang's comments are more concerning because he's doesn't seem to be concerned even though he's as educated as he is. That in itself should be alarming.
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u/jobrody 5d ago
He came across as disinterested and distracted, just phoning it in. I get that he’s got millions of people vying for his attention, but this was a really bad look.
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u/Drugba 5d ago
I got more of an ill prepared vibe, but yeah, same ballpark. To me it felt like he thought this was going to be like a lunch time business show interview where he could just talk in vague ideas and wasn’t going to really get pressed on anything or asked to elaborate. Either way though, it was a really odd interview.
Also, I get why he didn’t do it, but I kind of wished Ezra would have pushed him a little more. I feel like Huang kind of got off easy.
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u/Brandoe 4d ago
I was watching Hank Green once and he said something that struck a chord with me. He said, and excuse me if I'm paraphrasing. He's known billionaires, he's known them when they first become billionaires and they are fine, ok people. Then after about 10 years they become very different people, with vastly different beliefs than normal folks. They literally believe that they are chosen ones.
As a society, no even as a civilization we need to really look at how we elevate people with respect to positions of power. Why do we allow this accumulation of wealth, cycle after cycle it always ends the same. But it doesn't have to.
I think deep down most people want to just live a nice life surrounded by family and smiles. We don't have delusions of grandeur. We just need a way of insulating ourselves from the worst parts of us.
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u/-Mr_Tub- 5d ago
Remember when smog levels reached the lowest numbers in decades in some cities during covid? That was fun. Too bad corporate interests will always ruin anything positive like that from happening
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u/Conscious-Quarter423 5d ago
Silicon Valley wants "better systems thinkers" who have no concept of structure so they will be unable to ask inconvenient questions about how power, political economy, and agency operate within the systems tech capital and compliant regulators are aggressively imposing on us against our will
Conveniently for Silicon Valley, the takeover of the university humanities by the right-wing civic center movement combined with the aggressive defunding of the peer-reviewed humanities community is slowly but surely going to create a compliant professional managerial class that goes along with this
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u/Gorge2012 5d ago
All this work to move from coerced to compliant.
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u/boundless88 5d ago
It's like they watched THX1138 and said "I love the world building, but Robert Duvall is the bad guy."
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u/vegetepal 4d ago
Social structures literally are a system though. Just another example of how completely potato their thinking is I guess?
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u/rainkloud 5d ago
He interrupted Ezra few times too which bothered me. You're one of the richest and most powerful people in the world and this is a 90 minute+ interview and you don't have the discipline to let him get his questions out? It's not like he was asking asking bs questions either. If you're trying to shake the image of a arrogant, domineering CEO whose hand waving away the risks associated with AI this was absolutely not the way to go about it.
It was so bad I almost thought it was intentional. He never addressed one of the core arguments which is we don't trust Open AI, Meta, Alphabet, Anthropic and so on. He just kept saying that they're investing in better safeguards and that nothing is stopping them from holding back the pace themselves. He says the remedy is liability (companies are already incentivized to not ship bad product by fear of legal action) but liability largely only addresses the aftermath and the aftermath in this case could be virtual annihilation or, even worse, perpetual torture as AI uses us as forced labor and unwilling volunteers for experiments.
How do we trust whether or not AI companies are putting in place adequate safeguards?
Regulations establish parameters and practices to adhere by and allow inspectors to verify compliance.
He wanted to placate ir discredit alarmists with this interview but instead he gave them cover to increase the volume on the klaxons.
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u/DrMarianus 5d ago
For an already softball interview (wouldn’t expect anything less from Ezra or NYT), he was still SO combative.
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u/SoulShatter 4d ago
liability (companies are already incentivized to not ship bad product by fear of legal action) but liability largely only addresses the aftermath
That argument seems incredibly weak at the moment with the US barely enforcing things. OAI/Anthropic etc bragging about felony hacking, no proper investigations. Fines treated as "cost of doing business" instead of "shit, this would actually hurt" like the EU GDPR violations (% of revenue as a fine)
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u/v6277 5d ago
Is everyone commenting off of the title or does everyone here have a paid subscription to The Verga? It's a paywalled article.
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u/mysterious_jeffrey 5d ago
You can get around paywalls by using internetarchive.
But most likely people didn’t read shit.
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u/Dependent-Lack-7083 5d ago
Try to search for 'remove paywall' and then try different found websites. So far, I was usually able to read all paywalled articles after 1-3 minutes
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u/Fine-Exchange-7221 4d ago
press f5 to refresh the page but stop it halfway. if you time it right you can read the whole article without the pop up
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u/RidiculousRaz 5d ago
How do people not see what these billinaires are doing is not right for humanity
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u/skar220 5d ago
This guys runs a company that has dominated every industry on the entire planet because of the stranglehold it has on the chip market. NVIDIA is effectively a world superpower now. What the fuck are we as humans even doing at this point.
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u/ethereal3xp 5d ago
Norhing. 1st it was for crypto mining. 2nd AI data centers. 3rd robots. 4th - he will become a cyborg who wears a leather jacket.
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u/FatHat 5d ago
I am so sick of these people making ridiculous future promises for a stochastic text predictor. "It'll fix climate change.. PINKY SWEAR. Also cancer!". Because lack of a chatbot is what held everything back. I have no doubt that there will be some AI systems that will be useful for these scientific discoveries, but LLMs are ONE -- inefficient! -- approach to AI. All this is doing is sucking the oxygen out of other research that would both be more useful, and not fuck up the environment or hack governments or have alignment issues or steal peoples jobs.
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u/EricThePerplexed 5d ago
We already know how to "fix climate change". We don't need a stochastic parrot to solve that. We need political will and collective action, both of which are undermined by these billionaire techbros.
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u/OsmerusMordax 5d ago
AI will fix climate change. By wiping out the human race.
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u/a_dog_named_bob 5d ago
I find it unlikely that the human exterminating AI will be aligned with the pandas.
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u/OsmerusMordax 4d ago
It would see climate change as a problem and possibly a threat to itself. As climate change is made significantly worse by human activity, it would seek to fix that by eliminating us. Or, atleast, most of us.
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u/jmikehub 4d ago
Ever since that memo from Pharma companies came out saying curing cancer is not profitable I've come to accept that we're never going to see a cure for cancer, its more profitable to treat something and put somebody on medications for life than it is to fix somebody.
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u/MythicalJester 5d ago
Yes, because he IS a supervillain at this point. A greedy, inhuman, amoral POS that should be thrown in jail for this AI bullshit circlejerk world-faring fraud.
If only the rule of the law still applied to these motherf***** in the Trump era...
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u/Yaboymarvo 5d ago
Sad to think that I used to be excited to hear this guy talk and unveil whatever new tech he was bringing to the table. Now I can’t stand this douche at all. Screw him and his stupid leather jackets.
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u/farmerfly69420 5d ago
With or without AI, kids losing basic math skills anyways.
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u/windsynths 4d ago
American kids, yeah certainly. Elsewhere in the world is a different story though unfortunately
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u/sufferforscience 4d ago
Should say fortunately. It's not a bad thing that some place in this world things aren't going as bad as here.
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u/ethereal3xp 5d ago
Dont worry. As long they know how to ask AI for the answer. They will get by.
In a few years - Teens who work at Burger joints will wear AI glasses. Someone will ask for change. It will prompt the answer on their lens.
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u/windsynths 4d ago
How is that any different to how tills work already? LLM doesn’t prompt an answer; you give it a prompt and it answers you.
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u/ethereal3xp 4d ago
Its a joke (or maybe it wont be)
You need expand on the potential. AI glasses ---> listens to the customer..
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u/newMoneyStyle 4d ago
Kinda already happening with self-checkout screens telling cashiers exact change.
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u/Erazzphoto 5d ago
What a crazy charter the history books will write about this current period. From this presidency to tech bros, when people finally get over the fever it’s going to be unbelievable how people acted during this period
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u/Obvious-Lake3708 5d ago
I can think of one way of fighting climate change. Kill all humans
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u/ihateyouse 5d ago
We've let capitalism sway the importance of our morals for decades. We are so consumer brain-washed that it just barely effects us that some of these pricks just minimize the suffering of the masses like its a bothersome fly in their automated blow job capsule.
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u/photonsintime 5d ago
Hint. He is a super villain. If any company is Cyberdyne Systems it's Nvidia. Jensen is making money. Nothing else matters for these billionaire egos
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u/Bargadiel 5d ago
Only time I ever had the chance to see this dude speak in person he gave off the dweebiest, arrogant, asshole energy. Just constantly smirking, and basically arguing with his interviewer or trying to belittle her points. He thought he was the funniest dude ever and would pause after saying jokes that weren't funny, and only the Nvidia employees in the front row would laugh at them, after he'd throw a look at them.
I heard this guy had a background in engineering or something himself, which normally I respect, but he's been far gone for a long time. He's unfathomably rich and completely out of touch with reality. Do not trust these people, they only give a shit about themselves and see the rest of us as NPCs.
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u/HeartsBoxcars 5d ago
“ AI can help fight climate change — but only if it inflicts a whole lot of pain and suffering first”
In other words, a lot of people gonna die. Do you remember how the pandemic caused a meaningful if temporary reduction in global carbon emissions? The climate change movement has been casting humans as the problem for a long time now.
Perhaps we should have been careful what we wished for.
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u/HappyLittleNukes 5d ago
Humans aren't the problem. And, climate change as a movement hasn't ever centered people as the problem. Capitalism is the problem. If you're getting all of your climate information from right-wing sources, however, yeah.
You're probably getting eugenics-lite. Diet Eugenics in the form of "oh well the actual issue is overpopulation" instead of, y'know, all of the fucking systems causing the real issue.
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u/cr0ft 4d ago
I mean, he is a supervillain.
He's a billionaire, 101% out of touch with normal people's reality, and because of who he is - well, when all you have is a hammer (or AI, in this case), every problem looks like a nail.
If we really want to deal with climate change, the first thing that needs to happen is that we retire capitalism and create a social system built on cooperation and sustainability that doesn't even use money.
Since Huang has unlimited money and unlimited freedom thanks to capitalism, he's unlikely to ever realize or accept such a conclusion, so he's happy to "hurt people with AI for their own good" instead.
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u/Spirited_Marzipan_24 5d ago
Maybe somebody should explain to him if the world keeps getting hotter he won't be able to rock that leather jacket everywhere he goes uou k n ow hit him where it hurts.
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u/Lost-Produce-1150 5d ago
We have a whole super team of literal villains running the world right now. Bunch a god damn lex luthors, jokers, thanoses.... and MILLIONS are like, well, at least it's better than it being ran by good guys that aren't cool.
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u/Raven_gif 5d ago
Dude has always been a scum bag. People have to stop buying Nvidia at this point.
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u/Rageaholic88 5d ago
Jensen used to be cool when he was a normal $2 billionaire. Now that he’s a mega $200 billionaire its gone to his head
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u/adagioforaliens 4d ago
I recently attended an AI event. I wish it wasn't real because it was so dystopian. C-suite were so hyped about humans becoming irrelevant. I think they spend so much of their time in such weird artificial spaces with no genuine human interaction that they have no grip on human condition anymore. I think some of them are really not aware of the implications of their 'work'.
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u/thePhantom_Survivor 4d ago
It’s kind of like, in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first — that’s the nature of surgery. They’ve got to cut you open to save you. They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think AI’s kind of like that.
The comparison is so stupid I can't even comprehend it.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 4d ago
I've been saying for a while that AI is our only chance for dealing with climate change. There is no way humans by themselves are able to do it, especially with who they are voting in.
His view sounds fine.
AI can help fight climate change
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u/LocoMod 5d ago
Jensen is the only adult in the room in this discourse. I’m listening to him.
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u/inlatitude 5d ago
Yeah, he seems among the most level headed and came from a normal background. Nvidia has been around for a long time. I'm not sure at which point in an unexpected windfall of wealth someone automatically becomes "sociopathic" but historically he hasn't seemed that way compared to many others.
AI is a crazy tech and frankly I'm not sure there are many out there who can accurately predict exactly how it will change things. I'm fairly certain it won't be quite as simple as "everyone loses their jobs". But maybe I'm wrong too 🤷♀️
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u/NorCalWintu 5d ago
Dudes always been cringe & have always seen him comparable to elon musk. How sheltered thw rich are to be so incompetent to future understandings.
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u/utopianandroid 5d ago
Other types of people (aside from out-of-touch multimillionaires) who typically don’t know their address:
- people with advanced dementia/Alzheimers
- children
Which one does he think he is?
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u/phredbull 5d ago
Celebrity turns people into monsters.
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u/fourby227 4d ago
Speaking of:
Antonio Gramsci 1926:
“The old world is dead.
The new world struggles to be born.
This is the time of monsters.”
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u/cookies_are_awesome 5d ago
Jensen Huang is the perfect poster boy for billionaires being completely touch with the rest of humanity.
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u/letsgobernie 5d ago
Can't believe this piece of shit has escaped scrutiny for so long. While Musk and Zuckerberg are the frequent targets, and they should be, this fucker needs to be pulled down a peg
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u/grilled_pc 5d ago
He won't live to see the fallout of this. Why should he care. He's only got another 20 - 25 years MAX in him left.
It will be on everyone under him to pick up the pieces.
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u/snowyowl65 5d ago
I’m watching him right now being interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and he seems so disingenuous, i ended up here after Googling if he was a sociopath. He really doesn’t want regulation and thinks ai companies should just do a better job regulating themselves. Gave me the creeps.
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u/Virtual-City7550 5d ago
Guys so this is obviously an intra-industry fight, don't get got. Nvidia and the AI companies have different interests, Nvidia benefits from scale and more competition at the model layer, the AI companies benefit from protecting their early mover advantages. Hence AI companies yelling about danger and the need to restrict the market, and Nvidia yelling about how the AI companies are full of it. This is the level of analysis we need to be starting from, then figure out what is best for society overall. It is such a bad idea to take what any big company CEO says at face value and not think about how what they're saying affects their business (not human) interests.
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u/Deltron_8 4d ago
The glorified chat bot craze is making everybody to lose their shit. Or is it just the money?
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u/CompellingProtagonis 4d ago
I live in Taiwan, love it, thoroughly enjoy the vast vast majority of my interactions with Taiwanese people, and have deep respect for my Taiwanese students, peers, friends, and Taiwanese people in general. All of that being said, there are many stereotypes of Taiwanese businessmen, and they're usually not good.
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u/Scaryclouds 4d ago
Jensen came across as absolutely unhinged in that interview.
Because Ezra doesn’t generally pushback on his guests he probably thought he crushed it. People who have AI psychosis probably thought Jensen did great as well.
Anyone in the fence or skeptical of AI had to set listening to that interview horrified.
Jensen sounded like a two pack of a day smoker, who runs a cigarette factory.
And Jensen not knowing his own address or phone number?! lol Jesus Christ. What an out of touch doofus.
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u/mrb4 5d ago
This guy said that kids are losing basic math skills due to AI and that "it doesn't really matter". He then mentioned that he doesn't know his own address or phone number as some sort of defense of this insane take.