AI Will Boost Jobs With Infrastructure Buildout: Huang



Artificial intelligence won’t be the large-scale job-taker as feared, as the tech needs workers to build and then maintain the trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure for it to run, says Nvidia founder Jensen Huang.

Huang argued in a blog post on Tuesday that AI has become “essential infrastructure, like electricity and the internet,” and the facilities that make the chips, build computers and eventually house AI are “becoming the largest infrastructure buildout in human history.”

“We have only just begun this buildout. We are a few hundred billion dollars into it. Trillions of dollars of infrastructure still need to be built,” he added. “The labor required to support this buildout is enormous.”

Huang said AI data centers require roles such as electricians, plumbers, steelworkers, network technicians and operators, which he added are “skilled, well-paid jobs, and they are in short supply.”

Nvidia (NVDA) is one of the biggest winners of the current AI boom, as it is the most dominant AI hardware supplier, with its chips in high demand. Its share price has risen by over 1,300% since 2023, shortly after OpenAI released the first public version of ChatGPT that kicked off an AI race.

AI needs “five-layer cake”

Huang described AI infrastructure as a “five-layer cake” involving energy, AI chips, infrastructure, AI models and then applications.

He said the infrastructure backing AI “had to be reinvented” from the ground up due to the way it works, as software typically retrieves stored instructions, while AI is “reasoning and generating intelligence on demand.”

“Much of the infrastructure does not yet exist. Much of the workforce has not yet been trained. Much of the opportunity has not yet been realized,” Huang said.

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“This is why the buildout is so large. This is why it touches so many industries at once. And this is why it will not be confined to a single country or a single sector,” he added. “Every company will use AI. Every nation will build it.”

Huang’s post comes as multiple companies across a broad range of industries have initiated large-scale layoffs, pointing to efficiencies gained through AI as the reason.

Last month, Block, Inc. cut 40% of its staff, a decision co-founder Jack Dorsey attributed to AI use at the payments company.

Social media platform Pinterest and the chemical company Dow also cited AI as the reason to cut a total of more than 5,000 employees between them earlier this year.

Goldman Sachs analysts said last month that AI-driven job losses have been “visible but moderate,” with the technology helping to raise the US unemployment rate slightly this year, from its current 4.4% to 4.5% by year-end.

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