Jensen Huang Rejects Bill Gates AI Jobs Warning, Predicts Net Job Creation at Unprecedented Scale

'I'm in favor of taxes,' says Nvidia's Jensen Huang -- but he doesn't agree with Bill Gates on his plan to slow an AI fallout | Fortune

The entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist also suggested that governments will need the funds. Gates figures that if AI takes the jobs of humans, then state revenues from income tax will drop. "A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net," Gates explained. Huang disagrees. In an interview with Fox Business's The Claman Countdown, the chipmaker boss said: "I love the heck out of Bill ... but I don't see what he sees. I see something very, very different. And so my remedies will be a little different." Huang added: "I'm in favor of taxes. And I think that ... for anybody who is productive, it's a great way for us to contribute back to society and the economy. But the fact of the matter is, there are probably lots of different ways to approach this." Gates -- a self-professed AI optimist -- had a markedly more cautious tone in his latest op-ed. He wrote that while AI promises huge boons (such as improving access to medicine and education and streamlining bureaucracy), it also poses huge threats that world leaders aren't ready for. These risks include 'stunted' child development, emboldened criminals, and vanishing jobs for Gen Z. Huang's perspective is more positive. He said that while "of course" the nature of jobs would change -- as his already has -- "I believe ... that this will be a net job creator. However, there are going to be many jobs that will be disrupted and so we have to be sensible about that. We have to be sensitive about that and be supportive of that." While Gates suggests that companies could be incentivized to replace humans with robots because of existing fiscal policy, Huang says the historical precedent disagrees: "When companies are more productive, they don't lay off people, they hire more people. The reason for that is because companies have ambitions ... and I would say the vast majority of the world's companies ... have ambitions for growth. "When they're more productive, when they're more profitable, [it] allows us to invest more and go after more growth. Nonetheless, overall, this is going to be a net job creator at a scale that we have never seen." A bid for reindustrialization Huang has previously suggested that skilled, blue-collar workers stand to gain significantly from the AI boom. Trades like plumbers and electricians, Huang has said, will be in high demand as data centers are built across the globe. Speaking this week, the 63-year-old tech titan suggested that the new economic era would be one of reindustrialization. He explained: "We have lots and lots of white-collar workers, but we're also going to have a lot of skilled labor. And having a large population of skilled labor and people who build things and make things with their hands is tremendous for the United States. We want to reindustrialize the United States. We want to create more jobs. And all of that's going to happen right now as we speak with A.I."

Jensen Huang Rejects Bill Gates' AI Jobs Warning: 'I Don't See What He Sees' - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang is pushing back on Bill Gates' warning that artificial intelligence could permanently wipe out huge numbers of jobs, arguing the technology will instead be a net job creator "at a scale that we've never seen." "I love the heck out of Bill," Huang told Fox Business this week. "But I don't see what he sees." Huang acknowledged some jobs will disappear, but argued Gates is drawing the wrong conclusion about what happens next. What Gates Sees Gates argued in an essay this week that AI differs from past technological revolutions because it can replace human cognitive labor itself rather than simply making workers more productive. He expects entry-level and mid-level roles to be hit first, including customer support, software engineering and paralegal work, before increasingly capable robots threaten physical jobs. Trending To slow displacement, Gates has proposed taxing AI tokens and robots and using the money to fund retraining and a stronger safety net. Huang Sees the Opposite Feedback Loop Huang's economics run the other way. AI makes workers more productive, higher productivity boosts profits, and ambitious companies reinvest those profits to expand and hire. "Some jobs will be eliminated," Huang said, but "many new jobs will be created." Gates sees substitution. Huang sees expansion. So Far, No AI Jobs Apocalypse The labor market has so far given both men some ammunition. AI was cited in 112,713 announced U.S. job cuts through July, roughly 24% of all cuts, and has ranked as the leading stated reason for layoffs for five consecutive months, according to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report. Yet total announced cuts are down 41% from the same period last year, and July's tally was the lowest monthly total in two years. AI-related layoffs are clearly real. A broad AI-driven employment collapse is not. But Gates May Have Found the Canary The more worrying evidence sits with young workers. Stanford researchers using payroll data covering millions of workers found employment among 22-to-25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed occupations is 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with less-exposed peers. The adjustment appears to be coming mainly through reduced hiring rather than firings, and the authors caution the results are not proof AI caused the decline. The first sign of AI displacement may not be mass layoffs. It may be companies simply hiring fewer people at the bottom of the ladder. What Prediction Markets Say Prediction markets aren't pricing a broad employment shock, at least for now. Polymarket traders price only an 11% chance the U.S. unemployment rate, which stood at 4.1% in July, reaches 5% this year. The market sees little sign of the sharp economy-wide rise in unemployment Gates fears. For now, the evidence sits somewhere between the two billionaires: AI is already eliminating some jobs and appears to be squeezing entry-level hiring, but the economy-wide employment destruction Gates fears has yet to materialize. Image: Shutterstock Markets EXCLUSIVE: Claude Revenue Surges 1,000% as Anthropic Gains on ChatGPT Claude now earns 31 cents for every $1 ChatGPT makes on mobile, up from just 3 cents in January, as Anthropic rapidly closes the revenue gap. 3 min read Read this article Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.