Jensen Huang wants to make AI the new world infrastructure

In one world As people increasingly doubt the potential of AI, you can count on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to be the last to highlight that AI will be the fundamental force transforming society.

Speaking to WIRED senior writer Lauren Goode at “The Big Interview” event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Huang called the AI ​​trend “a reboot of computing as we’ve known it for the last 60 years.” The power of AI is “so incredible that you can’t compete with it,” he said. You’re either on that wave or you missed that wave.”

That means, Jensen said, “people are starting to realize that AI is like the energy and communications infrastructure — and now there will be an infrastructure for digital intelligence.”

The task for Huang now, however, is whether he can get others, particularly governments around the world, to agree on his vision.

Huang was the only interviewee at the event who called from outside the country. He was in Thailand, where Huang said he lived for five years as a child, and where he had just met today with Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the Thai prime minister, to discuss building a “world-class AI infrastructure” in the country to speak.

It’s the final stop on Huang’s tumultuous journey this year, as he pitches governments on the idea that they should pave their individual paths into the future by building their own AI infrastructure, processing their own national data, about their own AI systems have and of course buy Nvidia chips for this purpose.

The pitch seems to have worked pretty well. According to Sherwood News, Thailand is the latest addition to a list of at least ten countries that have signed up for AI infrastructure projects with Nvidia. Huang himself said during the interview that he has been to Denmark, Japan, Indonesia and India this year; All countries decided to build their own national AI systems – using Nvidia chips.

The success of Huang’s presentation to global governments reflects both a fundamental recognition of the potential of AI systems and an increasingly fragmented internet in which geographical boundaries are being rebuilt online. AI is the latest technology product where the invisible flow of chips and data is hindered by nation-state borders.

One of the main tensions is between the United States and China, two technology leaders eager to take first place in the coming wave of technological change. When the two countries collide, Nvidia will inevitably find itself at the center of the storm.

Just on Monday, the Biden administration announced new restrictions that will ban the export of chip components and chip manufacturing technologies to China. One of the limitations concerns high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a memory component commonly used in custom AI chips. Nvidia’s H20 chips, which are intended to be sold to Chinese companies without violating export controls, contain HBM chips. According to Chinese media reports, Nvidia reportedly stopped accepting Chinese orders for H20 chips back in September and expects the restrictions to come this week.