Fears that AI could displace human workers have grown a defining concern for younger generations. Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang you see it differently. Technology, he argues, has “started a revolutionary wave“—today’s graduate is well-positioned to drive. “I can’t imagine a more exciting time to start your life’s work,” Huang said during a keynote address at Carnegie Mellon University’s commencement ceremony yesterday (May 10). Instead of shying away from AI, he urged graduates to embrace it. “Artificial intelligence is better than you, but it’s unlikely to replace AI. your moment to help shape what comes next—so run, don’t walk.”
Huang, 63, was born in Taiwan but began attending boarding school in rural Kentucky at the age of nine. He later graduated from Oregon State University in 1984, at the “start of the PC revolution” and co-founded Nvidia the following decade. The chip maker’s early years in computer games were rocky, including a near-bankruptcy scare in 1996.
However, Huang’s leadership — and a genuine shift toward AI chips in the mid-2000s — has since turned Nvidia into the world’s most valuable public company, with a market capitalization of $5.3 trillion. The company’s growth has also increased Huang’s personal wealth; he is currently ranked as the eighth richest person in the world, by one estimate Net worth of $188 billion.
Huang, who earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering after his time at Oregon, also received an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree from Carnegie Mellon yesterday. The Pittsburgh-based school is where AI began, Huang said, pointing to its role in creating Logic Theorist in the 1950s, widely considered the first AI program.
If Huang graduated at the dawn of the PC age, today’s students are entering something even bigger: a transformation driven by the rapid spread of AI “I’ve lived through every major computing platform shift: mainframe, PC, Internet, mobile and cloud,” he said. “But what’s going to happen now is bigger than anything before.”
That change, however, comes with anxiety about how AI could reshape the job market, especially for young professionals. A growing body of research suggests that early career roles, esp in areas such as coding and customer serviceare declining. Unsurprisingly, concern is growing among young workers. While some 58 percent of workers expect AI to have a high or very high impact on their tasks, these fears are even more pronounced among Gen Z, according to a recent survey by recruitment agency Randstad.
High-profile AI-related breaks are not alleviating these concerns. At the beginning of this year, Block cuts 40 percent of the workforce, citing the productivity benefits of technology. Similar reductions have since been announced in the company including Snap, Meta AND Microsoft.
Huang acknowledged that such concerns are natural as AI systems take on tasks such as writing software, driving cars and generating images. But he emphasized the technology’s advantages, including its potential to narrow technical skills gaps. “Only a fraction of the people in the world know how to write software – now, anyone can ask AI to build something useful,” he said.
He is particularly optimistic about the job creation associated with the massive build-out of AI infrastructure. As companies race to build the data centers needed to power these systems, Huang said, they will give “America the opportunity to build again. Electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, technicians, builders: this is your time.”
This is not the first time Huang has highlighted the promise of trade jobs in the age of AI. Earlier this year, he predicted that workers on such projects could earn “six figure salary.Not all CEOs share his optimism. Anthropogenic CEO, Dario Amodei has warned that AI it can replace half of all entry-level jobsWHEREAS FordS ‘ Jim Farley and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan have too raised concerns about how quickly industries can adapt.
Yes, many tasks will be increasingly automated, Huang said. But that doesn’t mean AI will replace humans completely. In fields like software engineering and radiology, where AI already holds promise, workers using the technology can write more code and analyze more scans, potentially increasing demand for their roles and widening the gap with those who don’t adopt it.
“We must not learn to fear the future,” Huang said. “We must engage it with optimism, responsibility and ambition.”
