The billionaire boss of the world’s leading chipmaker visited Washington on Friday with a counterintuitive message for policymakers: Embracing artificial intelligence would be good for the climate.
“The goal of AI is to do things more productively, with a lot less energy,” Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said at a standing room-only event at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “The energy efficiency and the productivity gains that we’ll get from it — from the industry, from our society — is going to be incredible.”
The California-based CEO came to town the same week that legislation advanced in the House calling for more federal research into the impacts of AI. His visit also coincided with Climate Week in New York, where the potential risks and rewards of the technology were the focus of debate.
Huang touted the comparative efficiency of the specialized chips his firm designs at the centrist think, where a mix of energy executives, venture capital investors and academics snapped photos of him on their phones and hung on his every word. The 61-year-old co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has a personal net worth of over $100 billion.
