Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: AI is the 'Great Equalizer' in Programming

The way you program an AI is like the way you program a person, says Nvidia's Huang

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says artificial intelligence is the "great equalizer" because it lets anyone program using everyday language. Speaking at London Tech Week on Monday, Huang said that, historically, computing was hard and not available to everyone. "We had to learn programming languages. We had to architect it. We had to design these computers that are very complicated," he said on stage alongside U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer. "Now, all of a sudden ... there's a new programming language. This new programming language is called 'human.'" Conversational AI models were thrown into the spotlight in 2022 when OpenAI's ChatGPT exploded onto the scene. In February, the San Francisco-based tech company said it had 400 million weekly active users. Users can ask chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot, questions and they respond in a conversational way that feels more like talking to another human than an AI system.

Nvidia CEO: You now program AI the same way you talk to people

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated at London Tech Week on Monday that artificial intelligence serves as an "equalizer," enabling users to program with natural language. Huang addressed the challenges of traditional computing, noting the necessity for specialized programming languages and complex computer architecture. He said, "We had to learn programming languages. We had to architect it. We had to design these computers that are very complicated." Huang introduced "human" as a new programming language, coinciding with the rise of conversational AI models after the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022. ChatGPT reported 400 million weekly active users in February. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft's Copilot allow users to pose questions and receive conversational responses, simulating human interaction. Huang emphasized that while expertise in languages like C++ or Python is limited, "everybody ... knows 'human'." Huang explained, "The way you program a computer today, to ask the computer to do something for you, even write a program, generate images, write a poem -- just ask it nicely." He further stated, "And the thing that's really, really quite amazing is the way you program an AI is like the way you program a person." U.K. and NVIDIA announce £1B AI push at London Tech Week Huang illustrated this by describing how to request a poem about the London Tech Week keynote speech: "You say: You are an incredible poet ... And I would like you to write a poem to describe today's keynote. And without very much effort, this AI would help you generate such a wonderful poem." He continued, "And when it answers ... you could say: I feel like you could do even better. And it would go off and think about it, and it'll come back and say, in fact, I can do better, and it does do a better job." These comments are concurrent with a growing trend of companies, including Shopify, Duolingo, and Fiverr, encouraging employees to utilize AI in their work. OpenAI reported having 3 million paying business users last week. Huang consistently promotes AI's capacity to enhance worker efficiency and advocates for its adoption to maintain employee value. He stated, "This way of interacting with computers, I think, is something that almost anybody can do, and I would just encourage everybody to engage it. Children are already doing that themselves naturally, and this is going to be transformative."

Nvidia's CEO Says It No Longer Matters If You Never Learned to Code: 'There's a New Programming Language'

The practice of coding by prompting an AI chatbot is known as "vibe coding." Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says that you don't have to be an expert programmer to prompt AI to write a program for you, making AI the "great equalizer" when it comes to bringing ideas to life with code. In remarks on stage at London Tech Week on Monday, Huang said that the barrier to code used to be high. Programmers had to learn specific languages and figure out how to architect code efficiently. Related: Want to Get Hired at Nvidia? This Is the Most Important Part of the Interview Process, According to CEO Jensen Huang Now, Huang said that AI enables even non-programmers to write code using natural language. AI coding assistants like Cursor and Replit can easily take a written prompt in plain English and turn it into code. The practice of relying on these AI assistants to write a complete program is known as "vibe coding" -- and even Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted last week to "vibe coding" a webpage. "Now, all of a sudden... there's a new programming language," Huang said at London Tech Week, per CNBC. "This new programming language is called 'human.'" Huang noted that while relatively few people know how to work with programming languages like C++ or Python, "everybody... knows 'human'." The way to ask a computer to write a program is to "just ask it nicely," as you would a person, Huang said. AI users are already following Huang's advice. ChatGPT users are saying "please" and "thank you" to the AI chatbot, treating it as politely as they would a person. The practice has a downside, though: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has lost tens of millions of dollars in added electricity costs to process the politeness interactions. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it "tens of millions of dollars well spent." Related: How Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Transformed a Graphics Card Company Into an AI Giant: 'One of the Most Remarkable Business Pivots in History' Non-coders are already tapping into AI to create projects and web apps without manually writing a single line of code. Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times, wrote in February that he was able to vibe code a new app called LunchBox Buddy to help him figure out what he should pack his son for lunch based on a picture of his fridge. Harvard University neuroscience student, Rishab Jain, told NBC News last month that he vibe-coded an app to translate ancient texts into English. Nvidia is the second most valuable company in the world at the time of writing, with a market capitalization of $3.48 trillion. The AI chipmaker's stock has grown by nearly 1,500% in the past five years and over 17% this year.