Artificial intelligence isn’t only coming for office jobs — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says blue-collar workers should be paying attention, too.
Huang leads one of the biggest chipmakers fueling the AI revolution. He joined Lex Fridman’s podcast in an episode published Monday to discuss everything from AI in space to work.
While blue-collar jobs have been considered relatively safe from AI disruption compared to tech roles like engineering, Huang said workers in every profession, including farming and electrical work, should use artificial intelligence to help future-proof their jobs.
“If I were a farmer, I would absolutely use AI. If I were a pharmacist, I would use AI,” Huang said. “I want to see what it could do to elevate my job so that I could be the innovator to revolutionize this industry myself.”
For example, he said coding represents a big opportunity for carpenters, and he would go “completely berserk” using AI if he were in that line of work.
“A carpenter with AI is also an architect,” he said. “They’ve just increased the value that they could deliver to the customer. Their artistry just elevated tremendously.”
Huang has said before that he is “certain 100% of everybody’s jobs will be changed” by artificial intelligence, and that while he expects some jobs to be lost, many will also be created.
Many tasks, for example, will be automated, and those jobs will be highly disrupted, he said on Fridman’s podcast.
But, he said, “If your job’s purpose includes you … then it’s vital that you go learn how to use AI to automate those tasks.”
Anxiety grows alongside AI
As AI advances, so has anxiety around job security. The fears aren’t unfounded. Companies have slashed thousands of jobs in the name of prioritizing new technology and automation.
Huang’s solution: Become an expert in AI, no matter what your job function is.
It could be the difference between landing a job and ending up unemployed. In almost every case, Huang said he’d rather hire the candidate who’s an AI expert over one who isn’t.
“Every college student should graduate and be an expert in AI,” Huang said.
It could help them stay ahead of the curve as AI quickly advances.
The next phase of AI is already here
Artificial general intelligence is a form of AI that elicits anxiety or excitement among the field’s most advanced minds. It’s the idea that AI will one day meet or surpass human intelligence. Huang said that the age of AGI is already here.
Fridman asked if AI could do Huang’s job of starting, growing, and running a successful tech company worth more than $1 billion.
It’s possible, Huang said.
He also said, “It’s not out of the question” that chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude could design an app that billions of people would use for $0.50 apiece, and then go out of business shortly after, similar to websites that went bust in the dot-com era.
Even his job running one of the most successful tech companies today isn’t immune to the effects of AI, he said, encouraging everyone to jump on the technology before they’re left behind.
“Go see what it can do to transform your current job, elevate yourself,” Huang said.
