Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appeared on an episode of the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience on Wednesday.
Ezra Akayan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is more optimistic than those predicting that AI will disrupt people’s jobs, and he uses a prediction from nine years ago to demonstrate why.
In a wide-ranging conversation about AI on The Joe Rogan Experience, Huang referenced a prediction made in 2016 by Jeffrey Hinton, a computer scientist and former Google vice president known as the “Godfather of AI.”
At the time, Hinton said that in five years, AI would be better at image recognition than humans, so “people should stop training as radiologists now.”
“But ironically, the number of radiologists is actually increasing,” Huang told Logan, adding that “almost every radiologist is now utilizing AI in some way.”
To understand the impact of AI on work, Huang added, “we need to go back to what the purpose of work is.”
“The purpose of a radiologist is to diagnose diseases, not to study images. Studying images is just a job that helps diagnose diseases,” he added.
He said as AI makes imaging studies faster and more accurate, radiologists will be able to perform more tests, which will result in more customers for hospitals.
“If economic conditions improve, we will hire more radiologists,” he added.
A study published in February by the American College of Radiology predicted that the number of radiologists in the United States will increase by up to 40% between 2023 and 2055.
In March, the New York Times revisited Hinton’s predictions. “He did not make it clear that he was talking purely about image analysis and that the timing was wrong but the direction was wrong,” Hinton said, according to the newspaper.
“You’re not going to lose your job to AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone using AI,” Huang told the Milken Institute’s World Congress in May.
He also dismissed predictions from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who said earlier this year that 50% of entry-level jobs would be destroyed as AI capabilities increase.
new industry
Huang said on the podcast that while some jobs that can be more easily automated will disappear, this will likely create new industries.
“I’m really excited about the robots that Elon is working on. It’s still a few years away. When that happens, there will be a whole new industry of engineers and people who have to build robots,” he said.
“The whole apparel industry is going to be robot-oriented. There’s going to be mechanics for robots. And there’s going to be people coming in to maintain robots,” he added.
