Timing is crucial. Grads are starting their careers at a terrific time, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who made the remarks this past weekend to grads.
After the California-based chipmaker reported a stronger-than-anticipated quarter and forecast sales of $11 billion in the current quarter, nearly 50% higher than what experts expected, Nvidia’s market cap came dangerously close to $1 trillion this week, leaving competitors like Meta, Tesla, and Berkshire Hathaway in the dust. Huang spoke of “huge orders” as data centers sought to support AI.
Huang acknowledged that he, too, benefited from good timing during his Saturday keynote address at the commencement ceremony of National Taiwan University in Taipei. He was born and raised in Taiwan and earned his degree from Oregon State University in 1984, the year the Apple Macintosh made its debut and helped to usher in a revolution in personal computing.
He asserted that 2023 would be similarly ideal for graduating as 1984 was.
Graduates will enter the workforce in 2023 when A.I. has “reinvented computers from the ground up,” he stated. This is the renaissance of the computer industry in every manner.
The multibillionaire CEO said, “A.I. has opened huge prospects.” Agile businesses will benefit from AI and strengthen their position, while businesses that don’t will fail.
According to him, A.I. will create “new jobs that didn’t exist before,” such as prompt engineering, industrial operations run by A.I., and A.I. safety engineers. He said that although individuals worry about losing their jobs to automation, they might lose them to someone more skilled at exploiting technology. He acknowledged that some employees might need help with automation.
Huang warned the graduates that they would “endure sorrow and suffering” if they did not “have the humility to confront failure and accept a mistake.” He spoke of his “humiliating and shameful” early failures at Nvidia. For instance, Nvidia later acknowledged that its “technically deficient” architecture was the “wrong strategy.” Still, by then, it had already signed a deal with Sega to work on developing a new game console.
The CEO of Sega consented despite his embarrassment, giving Nvidia “six months to survive,” he said.
Nvidia did endure and eventually rose to prominence in both the gaming and artificial intelligence sectors.
Huang advised grads to “go after it like we did” now that the A.I. age is here. Walk, not run.
