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JEN-HSUN'S VISION FOR NVIDIA - AND THE AI WORLD By Mark Anderson
Why Read: Last week, we attended Nvidia's GTC developer conference, live for the first time in five years. While there are thousands of pundits telling all of us about the true meaning and future of AI and large language models (LLMs) such as GPT, Jensen Huang may be the person who has a longer-term, and deeper, understanding of exactly where this is going. More important, as CEO of the world's largest (AI) chip company, he has the power to make that dream happen. _______ This week's report is both technical and strategic, including a great deal of detail in both contexts. Given the complexity of the subject, I thought it best to make a strong statement about Nvidia and founding CEO Jensen Huang's leadership role in its technology and commercial roadmap. While questions persist about the value and risks inherent in the field of AI that's based on large language models (LLMs) and related generative AI (GAI) technology, I have yet to see a more virtuoso technical performance than Jensen's during the keynote at this year's GTC developer conference. It is easy to understand how Nvidia came to its current leadership position in both hardware and, now, software in this part of the AI world. And it is inspiring to see a corporate leader as deeply focused in the technology and its global context. _____ I first met Bob Sherbin, Jensen's head of corporate communications, when he was working for Mark Hurd, then CEO of HP. Bob called me just before our SNS New York Predictions Dinner at the Waldorf and told me that after reviewing the tech landscape, he had decided I was the Number 2 tech influencer, so I should meet Mark. (He never told me who was Number 1.) Bob later moved to Nvidia, and I met Jensen, who then agreed to present our 2010 FiRe Conference Centerpiece Conversation. At that time, I had been writing about using GPUs as CPUs for a couple of years, calling it "X,Y" computing with the idea of turning the GPU on its side, metaphorically speaking. I shared the idea with Jensen during our interview, which you can see in the video at the link in the "SNS Connection" section at the bottom of this piece. One way or another, that idea seemed to have legs.
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