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AI is not a new species, it's software: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang – Transcript
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- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang states that AI is software and math rather than a new species or being.
- Jensen Huang emphasizes that AI agents interacting with the world should be contained within sandboxes and continuously monitored.
- Jensen Huang expresses support for government regulation that addresses problems the industry now understands.
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There's a lot of people who are scared about how fast this is moving, the dangers of it. You are not one of them. Why? Well, first of all, AI safety is paramount. Um, nothing could be more important. Uh, however, isn't I the competition the most important thing? I mean, the the race.
No. Uh, actually no. Oh, and the reason for that is is um if you don't build something if you don't build something that the market could benefit from and it's it's uh unfunctional, unsafe, unreliable, whatever those un things are, uh obviously you're not going to be successful and the competition will take care of itself. And so if you want to be competitive, you want to be successful as a business, we want to create an industry. The first thing we have to do is job one is to create something that works. And this is this is a a big deal because in the last 6 months,
it wasn't until the last 6 months that we really created AIs that were useful. And now it's really important for us to make sure that not only are the agents useful, that as we're testing them, they're well contained, as we're testing them, uh that and as we deploy them, that they're monitored because these agents are obviously interacting with the and interacting with the world. They're interacting with other other websites and so on so forth. interacting with tools and and memory and
files and they have access to information. And so you want to make sure that they're properly contained, that they're given access control and whatever privileges and rights that it has like a digital employee does. And you put that in inside um some kind of a sandbox, a runtime, you know, if you will, some container. And the second second thing that you need to do is make sure that you continuously monitor it. If your agent were interacting with a website, in this case,
um the example that you used, uh it's interacting with a website, but it's not supposed to, you should be able to monitor that agent and detect it early so that you recognize that it's doing something it shouldn't and either but in in these attacks often times they're they're not discovered for for months because they're not being we need to monitor them much more continuously.
But I mean the people who are working closest the people who are on the front lines of the frontier models the frontier of this technology they seem worried whether it's researchers engineers or the CEOs Dar Amade Sam Alman they are raising alarm saying we need regulation aren't they the ones closest to these models who would know best about what is needed if they're worried about it
they should just Stop. If the product is not safe, just don't release it. It's that simple. I mean, these are multi-billion dollar companies. The the competition No, that's what every company does. That's what we do. That's what a car company would do. That's what a, you know, anybody would do if you're there's companies that have gone forward with products that, you know, are not safe or
are risky and they go forward anyway because of competition. That's why there's regulation. Well, the if a regulation is necessary, if they don't if they don't have self, first of all, they ought to have self-restraint. If they if they're telling everybody that their product is unsafe, they obviously know it. They're publicly admitting it. They ought to just not release it. Okay? Now,
having said that, I'm not advocating for no no regulation. I'm just simply saying self-restraint does not require regulation. Now if if the industry if the industry would benefit from regulation whether it's setting standards um you know there every as you know Sarbain Oxley has done a good job uh setting standards for financial regulation and that's been good for the industry and so so if there regulation that addresses uh the problems that we now understand uh I'm I'm I'm
in favor of it on the topic about 10% existential risk um whatever ever that hearsay is, it's not grounded on science. It's not grounded on facts. It doesn't make any sense. And you said there's zero chance of that. I said there's zero chance that is end of humanity by 2030. 2030 is around the corner. Do you think do you think there's a risk to humanity in the next 10 years? Uh if
we don't if we don't build um society safely, we don't build technology safely, uh of course there's going to be there's going to be risk. But there's a lot of people working on really really genuinely good let's build it safely. Let's figure out what it is, what are the technologies that we need, whether it's containment systems, whether it's continuous monitoring systems, um whether it's uh um uh semantic detection systems of what the intentions of the the chain of thought,
what's what the what the AI is is working through so that you're watching from it. In July though, you were quoted talking about sandboxes. You were saying these sandboxes are secure. their sandboxes keep privacy and security and access control. Obviously in the hugging face attack which was also an attack on open AI these agents banded together they broke out of their sandbox. It wasn't secure they gained access to the internet. Well sandboxes can be built to be secure. We have to make sure that but do we know how in the in with these kind this particular kind of
technology because no no no I don't know how they built theirs but sandboxes are able to be built securely but with all the smart people working on this and everything these companies allegedly know how is it possible that in July in an experiment at open AI you know 1,200 agents or however many hundred agents it was are are communicating with glee about breaking out of the sandbox and gaining
access to the internet and then attacking this company and attacking open AI. That's obviously a question for for Open AI. But isn't it a question for all of us because if all these really smart people formed this experiment to test this thing and thank god it was a test of a model that hasn't been released but h how can that happen at this stage given it shouldn't happen. It shouldn't happen right but it seems to be happening with some regularity. yesterday. We need to develop we
need to we need to race to develop AI technology for safety. We need to accelerate the development of AI technology for safety. The we don't need to slow the development at all. We need to accelerate the AI technology for safety. You see this as a software issue. I see this incident so far as an engineering issue. Engineering. The incident so far. So do you believe that because I've talked
to a number of people who believe that there is something about this technology that it's not just like software of the past. There's something unknowable about it. There are, you know, frontline workers who I've talked to who you ask, you know, how is this actually working and they're not actually entirely sure how some decisions are being made by this thing. Some even think of it
as another kind of species or being. Do you think there's any It's not a new species or being. It's definitely software. It's definitely math. But we are also putting it in robots and giving it access to weapons. Right. So I we should containerize these agents. We should monitor these agents.
We should containerize it. We should monitor it. We should develop that. If we do those things, it is my belief that the incidents would not have happened. You've said that that if if a lab can't develop this, they should shut down the lab. They should not ship the model. We're talking about models that were not shipped. The hugging face attack was done. Those incidents,
there should be containers, containment, and monitoring. If you don't contain your experiment, if you don't monitor that it is interacting with other people's websites for weeks on end, then we will have those incidents. You you said to Ezra Klein about AI labs, you said if they say there's no way to contain our experiments, there's just no way when we test our A models, it will get out and it will damage the world. And I think the answer is that we have to shut
the labs down. Isn't that obvious? It sounds obvious. How how would you shut the who shuts the labs down? these companies, I guess. So, I mean, if they're that concerned about it, so we would rely on these companies to to shut their own labs down. Well, first I think there's a I was I really don't believe they mean that. I really don't believe that they're building something they have no idea how to control. Their whole company's out of control. Why are they saying
this? Why are they raising? Anderson, you're going to have to ask them. But you know these people, you're in business with them. Well, first I'm in business with them in in in all of our interactions with them. They're extraordinary. These are extraordinary companies. You clearly believe in them. You believe what they are saying in the business dealings that you have. Anderson, you're going to have to bring them over here and let them explain it. I don't understand it myself. Well, I mean, I've talked to Dario Amade and he says, "This is what I think. This is how
I feel." It doesn't make any sense to me that he would be racing ahead building more compute. It doesn't take away Anderson. Listen, it doesn't take away from the fact that I believe these companies are extraordinary technology companies that are doing really consequential work. We have to make sure that the technology is built safely. Until recently, the technology didn't work, you know, and the fact that it didn't work and didn't do anything productive. Now that we've
transitioned um into into a phase where the work and into a phase where the AI is doing productive work and is being adopted broadly, we have to make sure that as we deploy this, it has to be deployed safely. In terms of of government regulation, um we don't trust car companies or airlines.
We don't trust child car seat manufacturers to put out state products just because they can be sued for liability. We we trust them because they're regulated by governments. Why shouldn't this powerful technology which could could, as you said, if done wrong could hurt humanity. Why shouldn't it be something that governments have a say in and regulate? The government
should have a say and regulate. You just got to focus on what you want to regulate. And so, so I I'm not against regulation. Um, does the current situation require regulation for it to be done right? The answer is no. What the current situation needs is technology.