Warnings about the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs are echoing from Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Washington, D.C., but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes you should worry less about robots and more about your coworkers, the people who are quietly “tokenmaxshing” or using artificial intelligence to do in minutes what takes you hours.
In a recent interview with former national security adviser H.R. McMaster of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, Huang said that artificial intelligence will not completely replace you. Instead, you might be replaced by workers who are more productive through the use of artificial intelligence.
“It’s unlikely that most people will lose their jobs because of AI,” Huang said in an interview published last week. “Most people are likely to lose their jobs because of people using AI. So we have to make sure everyone uses AI.”
The announcement breaks with warnings from other business leaders about the technology. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the technology will eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Microsoft’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, said the same thing and gave it about 18 months until this became a reality.
At the same time, workers are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the adoption of artificial intelligence. KPMG found in November that four in 10 workers were worried that artificial intelligence would replace their jobs. A report from Writer, an AI enterprise platform, found that 29% of employees are actively undermining their company’s AI strategy, with about a third expressing concern that AI will do so.
While other business leaders insist that artificial intelligence will cause broader labor market disruption, the 63-year-old billionaire remains adamant that the technology will not lead to mass layoffs. In an interview last May, Huang said the technology could actually allow as many as 40 million people to return to the workforce. In March, the CEO mapped out exactly how AI would transform the workplace, predicting there would be 100 AI agents working alongside every human employee.
According to the Writer, Huang’s prediction has already been reflected in the labor market. In the survey, 60% of executives said they were considering laying off employees who refuse to adopt artificial intelligence. Additionally, employees who used AI in the last year were three times more likely to receive promotions and raises than employees who were hesitant to adopt AI.
Nonetheless, a recent human study believes that artificial intelligence can theoretically already perform most tasks associated with white-collar professions, such as law, business, engineering, and management. But Huang explained that while AI can automate specific tasks, it won’t necessarily eliminate careers.
