NVIDIA CEO Envisions AI Assistants for Everyone, Introduces 'Physical AI'

NVIDIA : 'Everybody Will Have An AI Assistant,' NVIDIA CEO Tells SIGGRAPH Audience

The generative AI revolution - with deep roots in visual computing - is amplifying human creativity even as accelerated computing promises significant gains in energy efficiency, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said Monday. That makes this week's SIGGRAPH professional graphics conference, in Denver, the logical venue to discuss what's next. "Everybody will have an AI assistant," Huang said. "Every single company, every single job within the company, will have AI assistance." But even as generative AI promises to amplify human productivity, Huang said the accelerated computing technology that underpins it promises to make computing more energy efficient. "Accelerated computing helps you save so much energy, 20 times, 50 times, and doing the same processing," Huang said. "The first thing we have to do, as a society, is accelerate every application we can: this reduces the amount of energy being used all over the world." The conversation follows a spate of announcements from NVIDIA today. NVIDIA introduced a new suite of NIM microservices tailored for diverse workflows, including OpenUSD, 3D modeling, physics, materials, robotics, industrial digital twins and physical AI. These advancements aim to enhance developer capabilities, particularly with the integration of Hugging Face Inference-as-a-Service on DGX Cloud. In addition, Shutterstock has launched a Generative 3D Service, while Getty Images has upgraded its offerings using NVIDIA Edify technology. In the realm of AI and graphics, NVIDIA has revealed new OpenUSD NIM microservices and reference workflows designed for generative physical AI applications. This includes a program for accelerating humanoid robotics development through new NIM microservices for robotics simulation and more. Finally, WPP, the world's largest advertising agency, is using Omniverse-driven generative AI for The Coca-Cola Company, helping drive brand authenticity, showcasing the practical applications of NVIDIA's advancements in AI technology across various industries. Huang and Goode started their conversation by exploring how visual computing gave rise to everything from computer games to digital animation to GPU-accelerated computing and, most recently, generative AI powered by industrial-scale AI factories. All these advancements build on one another. Robotics, for example, requires advanced AI and photorealistic virtual worlds where AI can be trained before being deployed into next-generation humanoid robots. Huang explained that robotics requires three computers: one to train the AI, one to test the AI in a physically accurate simulation, and one within the robot itself. "Just about every industry is going to be affected by this, whether it's scientific computing trying to do a better job predicting the weather with a lot less energy, to augmenting and collaborating with creators to generate images, or generating virtual scenes for industrial visualization," Huang said. "Robotic self-driving cars are all going to be transformed by generative AI." Likewise, NVIDIA Omniverse systems - built around the OpenUSD standard - will also be key to harnessing generative AI to create assets that the world's largest brands can use. By pulling from brand assets that live in Omniverse, which can capture brand assets, these systems can capture and replicate carefully curated brand magic. Finally, all these systems - visual computing, simulation and large-language models - will come together to create digital humans who can help people interact with digital systems of all kinds. "One of the things that we're announcing here this week is the concept of digital agents, digital AIs that will augment every single job in the company," Huang said. "And so one of the most important use cases that people are discovering is customer service," Huang said. "In the future, my guess is that it's going to be human still, but AI in the loop." All of this, like any new tool, promises to amplify human productivity and creativity. "Imagine the stories that you're going to be able to tell with these tools," Huang said.

Nvidia begins ushering in next wave of AI - physical AI: SIGGRAPH 2024

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang previewed what he views as the next wave of generative artificial intelligence, physical AI, at the SIGGRAPH conference in Denver on Monday. "The first wave was accelerated computing, which lowers the amount of energy used," Huang said. "The next wave of AI was enterprise - customer service. We want to give every organization the chance to create their own AIs." "The next wave is physical AI," he added. "It requires three computers. One computer to create AI, another to send commands to a robot, and a third computer to handle it all." "We are entering the age of the AI-powered humanoid robot," said a voice during a video presentation on physical AI. Nvidia revealed in detail how it is accelerating humanoid robotics development at the conference. New offerings include Nvidia NIM and OSMO NIM microservices and frameworks for running multi-stage robotics workloads. Also, the MimicGen NIM microservice "generates synthetic motion data based on recorded teleoperated data from spatial computing devices like Apple (AAPL) Vision Pro," according to Nvidia. "The Robocasa NIM microservice generates robot tasks and simulation-ready environments in OpenUSD, a universal framework for developing and collaborating within 3D worlds." Several microservices are now available in preview, with more coming soon, Nvidia said. Earlier during the discussion, Huang revealed an AI-powered customer service agent. It contains knowledge of human customer service agents, and interacts visually with customers, even making facial changes appropriate to the tone of the conversation. WIRED senior reporter Lauren Goode questioned the ethics of using an AI customer service agent that genuinely appears human. "It's still pretty robotic, and that's not a terrible thing," Huang responded. "We've made this digital human technology realistic, but we still know it's a robot ... This could help someone who is lonely, elderly. Having someone much more human than a text box is a good thing." Huang painted the picture of a world where people in all types of industries have their own personal AIs that have learned how to act and respond in a way similar to their human tutor. Huang said he envisions creating an AI version of himself built on a collection of everything he has said or written that could generate responses nearly identical to his own. He wants every employee in his company to have their own AI assistant. "Nvidia's latest designs wouldn't be possible without AI," Huang said. "Without AI there would not be a Hopper or the Blackwell. The concept is for digital AIs that will be able to augment every single job in the company." "We invent tools here," he added. "We create tools to do bigger and better work - to do things we couldn't do before."