EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,037 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- JHJensen Huang
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Hello, Jensen.
- JHJensen Huang
Hey, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you again.
- JHJensen Huang
It's great.
- JRJoe Rogan
We were just talking about ... Was that the first time we ever spoke? Or did ... Was the first time we spoke at, at SpaceX?
- JHJensen Huang
SpaceX.
- JRJoe Rogan
SpaceX the first time, when you were giving Elon that crazy AI chip.
- JHJensen Huang
Right, DGX Spark.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Ooh, that was a big moment.
- JHJensen Huang
That was a huge moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
That felt crazy to be there. It was like w- watching these wizards of tech, like, exchange information and, and w- you're giving him this crazy device, you know? And then the other time was, uh, I was shooting arrows in my backyard. And, uh, randomly get this call from Trump and he's hanging out with you.
- JHJensen Huang
President Trump called and I called you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's just, he-
- JHJensen Huang
We were talking about you.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) He, he's so ... It's just weird that he's calling-
- JHJensen Huang
We were talking about you, he w- talking about the US- UFC thing he was gonna do in his front yard.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
And he pulls out, he's, "Jensen, look at this design." He's so proud of it. And I go, "You're gonna have a fight in the front lawn of The White House?" He goes, "Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna come. This is gonna be awesome." And he's showing me his design and how beautiful it is. And he goes, a- and somehow your name comes up. He goes, "Do you know Joe?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna be on his podcast." He's, "Let's call him."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
He's like a kid.
- JHJensen Huang
I know, let's call him.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so ... He's like a 79-year-old kid.
- JHJensen Huang
And he tells you. Ah, he's so incredible.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it was ... He's an odd guy. Just very different, you know, like, than what you'd expect from him. Very different than what people think of him, and also just very different as a president. A guy who just calls you or texts you out of the blue. Also, he makes ... When he te- he texts you ... You have an Android so it won't go through with you, but with my iPhone, he makes the text go big. Like, you know-
- JHJensen Huang
Is that right?
- JRJoe Rogan
"USA is respected again," like ... (laughs)
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- 15:00 – 30:00
I think the big…
- JHJensen Huang
o- oftentimes, the definitio- uh, definition of power is military power or physical power. But in, in the case of technology power, when we translate all of those operations, it's towards more refined thinking. You know, more reflection, more planning, more options.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think the big fears that people have is, one, a big fear is military applications.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a big fear.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because people are very concerned that you're going to have AI systems that make decisions that maybe an ethical person wouldn't make or a moral person wouldn't make-
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... based on achieving an objective versus based on, you know, how it's gonna look to people.
- JHJensen Huang
Well, I'm, I'm happy that, that, uh, our military is gonna use AI technology for defense. And I think that, that, um, uh, Anduril, uh, building military technology, I'm happy to hear that. I'm happy to see, um, all these tech startups now channeling their technology capabilities towards defense and military applications. I think they need to do that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, we had Palmer Luckey on the podcast and he was demonstrating some of the stuff with his-
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah, it's incredible.
- JRJoe Rogan
... helmet on. And we show-... he showed some videos of how you could see behind walls and stuff. Like, it's nuts.
- JHJensen Huang
And he's, he's actually the perfect guy to go start that company, by the way.
- JRJoe Rogan
A 100%.
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, 100%. It's like he's born for that.
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. He came in here with a copper jacket on.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a freak.
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It's awesome. He's awesome. But it's also... it's a, you know, an unusual intellect channeled into that very bizarre field is what you need, you know?
- JHJensen Huang
And I think it's, it's, uh... I think... I'm happy that we're making it so-... more socially acceptable. You know, there was a time where when somebody wanted to channel their technology capability and their intellect into defense technology, uh, somehow they're vilified. Um, but, uh, we need people like that. We need people who enjoy, enjoy that part of, uh, app- application of technology.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, people are terrified of war, you know? So it makes sense-
- JHJensen Huang
Well, the best, best way to avoid it has excessive military might.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think that's absolutely the best way? Not, not diplomacy? Not working stuff out?
- JHJensen Huang
All of it.
- JRJoe Rogan
All of it.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have to have-
- 30:00 – 45:00
(laughs) …
- JRJoe Rogan
not yet.
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
But you guys are working towards it. Um, the, the thing about you're saying about conscience and sentience, that you don't think that AI will achieve consciousness, or that-
- JHJensen Huang
The question is what's the definition?
- JRJoe Rogan
... consciousness is specific? Right.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah, what's the definition of consciousness?
- JRJoe Rogan
What is the definition to you?
- JHJensen Huang
Um, uh, consciousness, um ...... uh, I gue- I guess, first of all, uh, you need to know about your own existence. Um ... You have to have experience, not just knowledge and intelligence. The concept of a machine having an experience, I'm not ... Well, first of all, I don't know what defines experience, why we have experiences and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJensen Huang
... yeah, and why this microphone doesn't. Uh, and so it ... I think I know ... I, well, I think I, I b- I think I know what consciousness is, the sense of experience, the ability to know self versus, versus, um, uh, the ability to be able to reflect, know our own self, the sense of ego. I think all of, all of those human experiences, uh, probably is what consciousness is. But why it exists versus the concept of knowledge and intelligence, which is what AI is defined by today.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJensen Huang
It has knowledge, it has intelligence, artificial intelligence. We don't call it artificial consciousness. Artificial intelligence, the ability to, uh, perceive, recognize, understand, um, plan, uh, perform tasks. Those things are foundations of intelligence, to know things, knowledge. I don't ... It's clearly different than consciousness.
- JRJoe Rogan
But consciousness is so loosely defined.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How can we say that? I mean, doesn't a dog-
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... have consciousness?
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Dogs seem to be pretty conscious.
- JHJensen Huang
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, and that's a lower level of consciousness than a human being's consciousness.
- JHJensen Huang
I'm not sure. Yeah. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, and it's-
- JHJensen Huang
The question is, what lower level intelligence-
- JRJoe Rogan
Not even lower level. Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
It's lower level intelligence-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JHJensen Huang
... but I don't know that it's lower level consciousness.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Hmm. …
- JHJensen Huang
comes up with a bunch of garbage, and you say, "No, no, no, the answer is this is a dog. I want you to produce dog." And all of the other switch, all the out- other outputs have to be zero, and I wanna back propagate that on- and just do it over and over and over again. It's just like, uh, showing a, a kid this is an apple, this is a dog, this is a cat, and you just keep showing it to them until they eventually get it. Okay, well, anyways, that big invention is deep learning. That's the foundation of artificial intelligence, a piece of software that learns from examples. That's basically we- machine learning, a machine that learns. Uh, and so, so one of the, the big first applications was image recognition, and one of the most important image recognition applications is radiology.
- NANarrator
Hmm.
- JHJensen Huang
And so, so, uh, uh, he predicted, uh, about five years ago that in five years' time, the world won't need any radiologists because AI would have swept the whole field. Well, turns out AI has swept the whole field. That is completely true. Today, just about every radiologist is using AI in some way, and what's ironic though, what's i- what's interesting is that the number of radiologists has actually grown. And so the question is why? That's kind of interesting, right?
- NANarrator
It is.
- JHJensen Huang
And so the prediction was in fact that 30 million radiologists will be wiped out, but as it turns out, we needed more. And the reason for that is because the purpose of a radiologist is to diagnose disease, not to study the image. The s- the image studying is simply a task to, in service of diagnosing the disease. And so now, the fact that you could study the images more quickly and more precisely without ever making a mistake, it never gets tired, you could study more images, you could study it in 3D form instead of 2D because, you know, the AI doesn't care whether it studies images in 3D or 2D. You could study it in 4D, and so the, now you could study images in a way that radiolo- radiologists can't easily do, and you could study a lot more of it. And so the number of tests that people are able to do increases, and because they're able to serve more patients, the hospital does better. They have more clients, more patients. As a result, they have better economics. When they have better economics, they hire more radiologists because their purpose is not to study the images. Their purpose is to diagnose disease. And so the question is, the, what I'm leading up to is, ultimately, what is the purpose, what is the purpose of the lawyer? And has the purpose changed? What is the purpose... You know, one of the examples that I gave is, is, um, that I would give is, for example, uh, if my car became self-driving, will all chauffeurs be out of jobs? The answer probably is not. Because for some per- for some chauffeurs, they c- for some people who are driving you, they could be protectors. Some people, um, they're part of the experience, part of the service, so when you get there, they, you know, they could take care of things for you. And so for a lot of different reasons, not all chauffeurs would lose their jobs. Some chauffeurs would lose their jobs, and, uh, many chauffeurs would change their jobs.... and the type of applications of autonomous vehicles will probably increase. You know, the usage of the technology within find new homes. And so I, I think you have to go back to, what is the purpose of a job? You know, like for example, if AI comes along, I actually don't believe I'm going to lose my job, because my purpose isn't to ... I have to look at a lot of documents, I study a lot of emails, I look at a bunch of diagrams, you know. Um, the question is, what is the job?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
And, and, uh, the purpose of somebody probably hasn't changed. A lawyer, for example, help people. That probably hasn't changed. Studying legal documents, generating documents, is part of the job, not the job.
- JRJoe Rogan
But don't you think there's many jobs that AI will replace?
- JHJensen Huang
If your job is the task.
- JRJoe Rogan
Particularly automation?
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah, if your job is the task.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. So, automation.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Factory workers.
- JHJensen Huang
If your job ... Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
If your job is the task.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a lot of people.
- JHJensen Huang
It could be a lot of people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
... but it'll probably generate ... Like, for example, uh, let's say we've, let's say, uh, I'm super excited about the, the, the robot Elon's working on. It's still a few years away. When it happens, when it happens, um, there's a whole new industry of technicians and people who have to manufacture the robots, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJensen Huang
And so, that, that job never existed. And so you're gonna have a whole industry of people taking care of, like, for example, you know, all the mechanics and all the people who are building things for cars, supercharging cars. Uh, that didn't exist before cars, and now we're gonna have robots. You're gonna have robot apparels, so a whole industry of ... (laughs) right? Isn't that right? Because I want my robot to look different than your robot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God.
- JHJensen Huang
And so, you're gonna have, (laughs) you're gonna have a whole, you know, apparel industry for robots. You're gonna have mechanics for robots, and you're gonna have, you know, people who comes and maintains your robots.
- JRJoe Rogan
Don't you think that'll all be automated, though?
- JHJensen Huang
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't think so?
- JHJensen Huang
No, not all of it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't think they'll all be done by other robots?
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
So currently, th- that…
- JHJensen Huang
What I mean, what, what I'm trying to say is that in ten years time, the amount of energy necessary for artificial intelligence for most people will be minuscule, u- utterly minuscule. And so we'll have AI running on all kinds of things and all the time, because it doesn't consume that much energy. And so if you're a nation that uses AI for, you know, almost everything in your social fabric, of course you're gonna need these AI factories. But for a lot of countries, I think you're gonna, you're gonna have excellent AI and you're not gonna need as much energy. Everybody will be able to come along, is my point.
- JRJoe Rogan
So currently, th- that is a big bottleneck, right, is energy?
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah, yeah. It is the bottleneck.
- JRJoe Rogan
The bottleneck.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is this, so was it Google that is making nuclear power plants to operate one of its AI factories?
- JHJensen Huang
Oh, I haven't heard that, but I think in the next six, seven years, I think you're gonna see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors.
- JRJoe Rogan
And by small, like how big are you talking about?
- JHJensen Huang
Hundreds of megawatts, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay. And these will be local to whatever-
- JHJensen Huang
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... specific company they have?
- JHJensen Huang
That's right. Will all be power generators.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- JHJensen Huang
You know, just like, just like your-... you know, somebody's farm. They-
- JRJoe Rogan
It probably is the smartest way to do it, right?
- JHJensen Huang
And it takes the burden off-
- JRJoe Rogan
Certainly the cleanest.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah. Takes the burden off the grid. It takes, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJensen Huang
And you could build as much as you need.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's-
- JHJensen Huang
And you can contribute back to the grid.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a really important point that I think you just made about Moore's Law and the relationship to pricing, because you know, a laptop today, like you can get one of those little Mac- MacBook Airs. They're incredible. They're so thin.
- JHJensen Huang
It's incredible.
- JRJoe Rogan
Unbelievably powerful. Battery life is crazy.
- JHJensen Huang
You don't ever have to charge it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Battery life's-
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... crazy. And, uh, it's not that expensive.
- 1:15:00 – 1:30:00
(laughs) …
- JHJensen Huang
And I described this deep learning thing, computer vision thing, and this computer called DGX-1. The audience was, like, completely silent. They had no idea what I was talking about.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJensen Huang
(laughs) And s- and I was lucky, because I, I had known Elon, and, uh, uh, I helped him build the first computer for Model 3, uh, uh, the Model S. And, uh, and when he wanted to start working on autonomous vehicle, I helped him build the computer that went into the, the, uh, Model S AV system, his full, full self-driving system. We were basically the FSD computer version one. And so we were already working together, and, um, when I announced this thing, nobody in the world wanted it. I had no purchase orders. Not, not one. Nobody wanted to buy it, nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon. He goes ... He was at the event, and we were doing a fireside chat about the future of self-driving cars. Uh, I think it was, like, 2016. Yeah, 20 ... Maybe, at that time, it was 2015. And he goes, "You know what? I have a company that could really use this." And I said, "Wow, my first customer." And so, (laughs) so I was pretty excited about it. And he goes, uh, "Yeah, uh, we have this company, it's a, uh, nonprofit company." And all the blood drained out of my face.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah. (laughs) It was like, I just spent a few billion dollars building this thing, cost $300,000, and, y- you know, the, the chances of a nonprofit being able to pay for this thing is approximate zero. And he goes, "You know, this is a ... It's an AI company, and, uh, it's a nonprofit, and, and, uh, we could really use one of these supercomputers." And so I, I picked it up. I built the first one for ourselves. We were using it inside the company. I boxed one up, I drove it up to San Francisco, and I delivered to Elon in 2016. A bunch of researchers were th- were there. Peter Thiel was there, Ilya was here, and there was a bunch of people there. And, uh, I walk up to the second floor, where they were all kind of in a room, this ... Smaller than your place here. And, and, uh, uh, that place turned out to have been OpenAI.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- JHJensen Huang
2016.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- JHJensen Huang
Just a bunch of people sitting in a room.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not really, uh, nonprofit anymore, though, is it?
- JHJensen Huang
They're not, they're not nonprofit anymore, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Weird how that works.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJensen Huang
But anyhow, anyhow, Elon was there. The ... Yeah, it was, it was really a great, a great moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
There it is.
- JHJensen Huang
Oh, yeah, there we go.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look at that.
- JHJensen Huang
Yeah, that's it. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. Look at you, bro, same jacket.
- JHJensen Huang
Look at that. I haven't aged.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJensen Huang
Not, not a lick of black hair, though. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, the size of it is, uh, it's significantly smaller. That was the other day-
- JHJensen Huang
Okay, so-
- JRJoe Rogan
... at SpaceX.
- JHJensen Huang
Oh, yeah, there you go.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, look at the difference. That's crazy.
- JHJensen Huang
Exactly the same industrial design.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's holding it in his hand.
- 1:30:00 – 1:31:49
(Exhales) …
- JHJensen Huang
that they were go- ... To complete the contract, to give us that money as an investment instead. And he said, "But it's very likely your company will go out of business, even with my investment." And it was completely true. Back then, 1995, $5 million was a lot of money. It's a lot of money today. $5 million was a lot of money. And here's a pile of competitors doing it right. What are the chances that giving NVIDIA $5 million, that we would develop the right strategy, that he would get a return on that $5 million or even get it back? 0%.
- NANarrator
(Exhales)
- JHJensen Huang
You do the math, it's 0%. If I were sitting there right there, I wouldn't have done it. $5 million was a mountain of money to Sega at the time. And so, I told him that, that, that, um, uh, "If you invested that $5 million in us, it is most likely to be lost. But if you didn't invest that money, we'd be out of business, and we would have no chance." And I, I told him that I ... I don't even know exactly what I s- said in the end, but I-... told him that I would understand if he decided not to, but it would mean the world to me if he did. He went off and thought about it for a couple days, and he came back and said, "We'll do it."
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- JHJensen Huang
It was monetary-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you have a strategy at to how to correct what it was doing wrong? Did you explain that to him?
Episode duration: 2:28:25
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