Jensen Huang & Arthur Mensch: Why Every Nation Needs Its Own AI Strategy
1520 segments
this is the greatest force of reducing
the technology divide the world's ever
known it will have an impact on GDP of
every country uh in the double digits in
the coming years nobody's going to do
this for you you've got to do it
yourself it's up to organizations to
Enterprises to countries to to to build
what they need the stakes at play are
basically the equivalent of modern
digital colonialization AI isn't just
Computing infrastructure it's also
cultural infrastructure
today we're talking about Sovereign AI
all things National infrastructure um
and open
source and so let's let's just start
with the first question I usually get
from nation state leaders which is is AI
actually a general purpose technology
right so in the in the history of
humanity we've had maybe a handful of
these 22 24 economists call these
specific technologies that accelerate
economic progress broadly across Society
right electricity the printing press and
the question everybody's asking right
now is is that the right way to think
about AI or why isn't AI just another
important but ultimately narrow
technology it is a general purpose
technology uh because uh it basically
revisit entirely the way we are building
software and the way we are using
machines uh and so in the same way that
internet was a general purpose
technology AI is a general purpose
technology here it allows to build
agents that are doing things on your
behalf and in that respect it can be
used in any vertical uh of the industry
it can be used for services for public
services uh it can be used to change the
life of citizens uh it can be used for
agriculture it can obviously be used for
defense purposes so it covers everything
that a state needs to worry about and so
in that respect it's very natural that
uh any state makes it a priority and
makes it uh and find a dedicated
National AI strategy
by the way everything Arthur said is
100% correct it is also exactly the
reason why everybody's given
up and it's precisely
wrong and the reason for that is this um
if it's a general purpose technology and
one company can build the ultimate
general purpose technology then why
should anybody else do it and that is
the flaw right but that's also the mind
trick to convince everyone that this is
a technology that intelligence is only
you know something that a few people
ought to go build everybody ought to sit
back and wait for it I would
advise that everybody engage
Ai and that this is not not for the
privileged uh intelligence is for
everyone and it is not just a few
companies in the world who should build
it everybody should build it nobody's
going to care more about uh the Swedish
culture and the Swedish language and and
the Swedish people and the Swedish
ecosystem more than Sweden nobody's
going to care about the the ecosystem of
Saud Arabia more than Saudi Arabia and
nobody's going to care about it about
Israel more than Israel despite the fact
that the technology is general purpose
and absolutely true how could
intelligence not be general purpose um
it is also it is also hyp specialized
and the reason for that is because let's
face it I don't think I'm waiting around
for a general purpose chatbot uh to be
an expert in a particular area of
disease I still think that I would
prefer to have somebody who is hyp
specialized in that field uh to F
fine-tune to train you know and post
train if you will right an AI model
that's going to be specialized in that
it's the general purpose technology the
same way your programming language is
the general purpose
technology uh and in addition to that
also a culture uh carrying technology so
I think what that means is that there's
an infrastructure there are chips that
obviously not every country are going to
build there are uh general purpose
models like base models compression of
the web uh that are eventually going to
be open source and that can serve as the
the right basis for constructing uh
specialized systems uh but beyond that
uh I think it's up to organization to
Enterprises to countries to to to build
what they need so the way to make it
work is to take a general purpose model
uh like an open source model for
instance and to get the knowledge you
have specifically or ask uh your
citizens or ask your employees to
distill their knowledge into the systems
into the agents that are going to be
working on your behalf so that do that
progressively those agents become more
accurate and more following the
instructions uh and the the the
specifications that the country or an
Enterprise may have when it's building
uh AI systems so you need vertical
experts or you need cultural experts or
you need people with a certain uh um
National agenda to partner with uh
technological companies that can expose
the open source infrastructure in a way
that is easy to use and in a way that is
easy to specialize so I think that's
where the the frontier lies it's a very
horizontal technology but to make
anything useful out of it you need a
partnership between the horizontal
providers and the vertical experts but
unlike previous general purpose
technology waves in history like
electricity or the or the printing press
how is this one different if I'm a if
I'm a nation state leader and I'm trying
to understand what the right framework
is for me to think about AI in my
country should I think about it like
digital labor should I think think about
it as as uh again to Bridges I think
it's similar to electricity in the sense
that it will have an impact on GDP of
every country uh in the double digits in
the coming years so that means that from
an economical point of view uh Every
Nation needs to worry about it because
if they don't manage to set up
infrastructure to set up their own
Sovereign capacities at the right place
that means that this is money that might
flow back to other countries so that's
kind of changing the economic
equilibrium across the world
in the sense that's not very different
from electricity which 100 years ago if
you weren't building electricity
factories you were you you you were
preparing yourself to buy it from your
neighbors uh which at the end of the of
the day isn't great because it creates
some uh some dependencies so that's I
think in that sense it is similar what
is fairly different I think there's two
things first of all it's a it's kind of
an amorphic technology uh if you want to
create digital labor with it you you
need to shape it you need to have
infrastructure talent and software and
the talent needs to be created locally I
think this is quite important and the
reason for that is that in contrast with
electricity this is a Content producing
technology so you have uh agents that
are producing content that are producing
text producing images producing voice
interacting with with people and when
you're producing content and interacting
with the society you become a social
construct and in that respect uh social
construct Theory cultures and and carry
the values of of either an Enterprise or
a country and so if you want those
values not to disappear and not to
depend on on a central provider you need
to engage with it more profoundly that
you would be to engage with electricity
for instance would you agree with that
Jensen couple of ways to think about it
your
country's digital
intelligence is not likely something you
would want to
Outsource to a third party
without some
consideration your digital intelligence
is just now a new infrastructure for you
your telecommunications your health care
your education your highways your
electricity now there's a new layer this
new layer is your digital
intelligence it's your responsibility to
decide how you want this digital
intelligence to
evolve and whether you want to Outsource
it so that you could never have to worry
about intelligence again uh or this is
something that you feel you want to
engage uh maybe even control and shape
uh into into a national infrastructure
of course it has all the things that
author said AI factories infrastructure
etc
etc there's another way you could think
about it is your digital
Workforce now this is a new
layer and you've got to decide whether
the digital Workforce
of your country or your company is
something that you decide to
Outsource hope it evolves the way that
you would like it to or is it something
that you want to
engage maybe even decide to control and
nurture and make better we hire general
purpose employees all the time we hire
them out of school some of them are more
general purpose than others some of them
are more intelligent than others
but once they become our employees we
decide to onboard
them train them guard rail them evaluate
them continuously improve them we make
the investment necessary to make general
purpose intelligence right into Super
intelligence that we could benefit from
and so I think that that second layer
thinking about it as digal Workforce in
both cases uh it contributes to the
National economy in both cases it
contributes to social advance in both
cases that it contributes to the culture
and I think that in both cases a country
needs to play a very active role in it
and so I I think it it it's back to your
original question about about Sovereign
AI how to think about it yes it is
definitely a general purpose technology
but you have to decide how to shapee it
your
country's Digital Data belongs to you
your uh national library right your
history for so long as you want to
digitize it you could make it available
to everybody in the world you could also
make it available to companies or
researchers and institutions in your own
country it belongs to you of course
these are all vaporous things they're
very soft ideas
um but it it does belong to you and you
could decide it belongs to you in the
sense that that this is where you came
from it belongs you belongs to you in
the sense that you could decide um how
to put it to use for the benefit of your
uh your people and it belongs to you in
the sense that uh it's your
responsibility to shape its future you
know Sovereign AI it's your
responsibility there are several other
types of assets that nation states fund
and protect the
military um your your electricity grid
if let's say I I I've understood not the
criticality of AI
infrastructure and Sovereign AI do I
have to
now take control of every part of the
stack Jensen mentions uh I guess digital
Workforce right and I think it's a very
good uh analogy that you need an
onboarding platform for your AI
Workforce which means you need to be
able to customize the models and pour
the knowledge that are sitting uh in
your National libraries into the model
so that suddenly speaks better your
language right uh you need uh to be able
to put uh to to get your systems to know
about your lows right so that suddenly
the guard rails that are set when you're
deploying an AI software uh are uh
compliant with uh everything that you've
done before and so that onboarding
platform that requires to customize to
gu to evaluate uh and then when noticing
that certain things needs to be improved
to fix things to debug things uh that's
the platform that we are building right
and once the custom systems are made uh
it's important to be able to maintain
them yourselves so that means being able
to deploy them on your own
infrastructure being able to ask your uh
technological Partners to potentially
disappear from the loop your it
department is going to become the HR
department Department of your digital
Workforce and they're going to use these
tools that Arthur describes to onboard
AIS fine-tune AIS guard rail them
evaluate them continuously improve them
right and that flywheel will be managed
by the the new the modern version of the
IT department right and we'll have
biological Workforce and we'll have a
digital Workforce and it's fantastic and
so so nobody's gonna do this for you
you've got to do it yourself right
that's why even though we have so many
technology companies in the world every
Company still has their own it
Department I've got my own it Department
I'm not going to out Outsource it to
somebody else in the future they'll be
even more important to me because
they'll be you know helping us manage
these digital workforces you're going to
do this in every country you're going to
do this in every company within those
countries and so so the space for what
Arthur is
describing uh to take this general
purpose technology
but to really fine-tune it right into
domain experts they're National experts
or they're industrial experts or they're
corporate experts these or functional
experts this is the future the giant
future space of AI well so you both said
something that I just want to make sure
I'm understanding correctly you you
called it uh soft a soft concept like
your culture and you said there are a
bunch of norms that the training data
has that you customize the models on it
sounds like you're saying unlike compute
storage networking which have by the way
you said Norms that exactly means it's
soft versus rules which are more hard
yeah or or algorithms and laws which are
very
specific yeah there's different things
that you want to incorporate into your
AI systems right there are some elements
of style and of um of knowledge that
you're not going to to enforce through
strict gws right that you can enforce
through continuous training of models
for instance you take uh the National
Library yeah you take preferences and
you you you distill it into the models
themselves and then you have a set of
flows uh you have a set of policies if
you're in the company and those are
strict and so usually the way you build
it is that you connect the models to the
strict rules and you make sure that
every time it answers it you verify that
the rules are respected so there's
really two things so on one side you're
pouring and compressing knowledge in a
soft way into the models and on the
other side you're making sure that you
have a certain number of policies and
and rules that are strictly enforced and
that have 100% accuracy so on one side
this is soft this is preference this is
culture preference somebody's preference
is
multi-dimensional you know you know what
you prefer it's implicit many times in
well there's so many there's so many
features that that defines my preference
it takes AI to be able to
precisely um comply with the description
that Arthur was describing just now
could you imagine if a human had to
write this in Python you know describe
every one of these capture every one of
these things uh in C+ plus you know
based on this I prefer that but if you
did that I prefer that other thing and I
mean the number of rules would be in
insane right which is the reason why AI
has the ability to kind of codify all of
this it's a it's a it's a new
programming model that can deal with the
ambiguity of life well it sounds like
you're saying AI isn't just computing
infrastructure it's also cultural
infrastructure yes it is is that right
and it's about making sure that your
cultural infrastructure and the human
experties that are uh in your in your
company or in your country makes it to
the AI systems right uh culture
reflection values we we were just
talking about how uh each one of these
AI models AI
Services um respond differently to the
type of questions you're asked right
because they they codified the values of
their service or the values of their com
company into each one of their services
could you imagine this now Amplified you
know at a international scale for me
this is an inherent limitation of
centralized AI models where you're
thinking that you can encode uh some
Universal values and some Universal
expertise into uh a general purpose
model uh at some point you need to take
the general purpose model and ask a
specific population of employees or of
citizens what what are their preferences
and what are their expectations and you
need to make sure that you're
specializing the model in a soft way and
in a hard way uh through rules and
through culture and preferences and so
that part is not something that you can
Outsource as a country it's not
something that you can Outsource as an
Enterprise you need to own it well then
is it an exaggeration to say if it is
cultural infrastructure and I don't own
sovereignty of it I'm the stakes at play
are basically the equivalent of modern
digital
colonialization if you're saying a
you've got to think about AI is almost
like your digital Workforce and another
country or somebody I who's not my
sovereign uh Nation can decide what my
Workforce can and can't do oh that's a
problem some of it is is universal for
example um it is possible for for
certain companies to serve um Nations
and and and society and companies around
the world because you know it's
basically Universal um but it cannot be
the only it can't can't be the only
social fabric it cannot be the only
layer it it can't be the only digital
intelligence layer it has to be
augmented by something Regional there's
hey you know I think McDonald's is
pretty good everywhere all right
Kentucky Fried Chicken's pretty good
everywhere I I think it's Starbucks is
fine everywhere um but you still want
the local style local taste that
augments on top of that that's right
local cafes you know the mom and pop
restaurants and because it it defines
the culture right it defines Society it
defines us and and so I think it's
terrific that you have Walmart
everywhere that you can count on
everywhere you know I think it's fine
but but there's you need to have local
taste local style local preference local
Excellence local you know Services maybe
let let me swing in another way the the
um uh it is very likely that in the
context of our digital Workforce in the
future uh we will have some digital
workers which are generic right they're
just really good at doing maybe basic
research or you know something basic
good college level graduate or they're
useful for every company it's
unnecessary for me to create something
new right I think Excel is pretty good
Microsoft Office is universally
excellent right I'm perfectly fine with
it reference good reference architecture
base that's right right then there's
then there's industry specific tools and
Industry specific expertise that is
really important like for example we use
synopsis and Cadence Arthur doesn't have
to because it's specific to our industry
not his we probably both use Excel you
know and so we both probably both used
PDFs we both used browsers you know and
so there's some Universal things that we
can all take advantage of and there'll
be universal digital workers that we can
take advantage of and then there'll be
industry specific and then they'll be
company specific right inside our
company we have some special skills that
are very important to us that defines us
you know it's highly biased if you will
okay they're biased to doing the things
that I need them to do very guard rail
to doing very specific work highly
biased to the needs and the Specialties
of our company right and and so we
become super hum in those areas well
your digital Workforce is going to be
the same and AI is going to be the same
there'll be some that
that you just kind of take off the off
the shelf you know the new search will
likely be you know some AI right the new
research will probably be some AI but
then there'll be industrial versions of
AIS that we'll maybe get from Cadence
and others and then we'll have to groom
our own using Arthur's tools right and
we'll have to fine-tune them we'll
onboard them we'll you know make them
incredible I very much agree with this
vision of having like a general purpose
model and then some layer of of um of
specializ for Industries and then an
extra layer of specialization for
companies and for countries you will
have a tree of AI systems that are more
and more specialized and maybe to give a
concrete example with what we recently
did uh so we released in January a model
called mistal small and it's a general
purpose model so so it speaks all of the
languages uh it knows mostly about most
things uh but then what we did is that
uh we took it and and we started a new
family of specialized models that were
specialized in languages
uh so we took uh more languages in
Arabic more languages in Indian in
Indian languages uh and we retrained the
model and so we distill this extra
knowledge that the initial model hadn't
seen and so in doing that we actually
made it much much better in being
idiomatic when it speaks Arabic uh and
when it speaks uh languages from the
Indian Peninsula and so that's language
is actually very it's probably like the
first thing you can do when you're
specializing a model the good thing is
that for for a for a given size of model
you can get a model that is much better
if you choose to specialize it in a
language so today uh our model it's the
24b it's called M saaba it's a model
tune on Arabic um is outperforming every
other Lang language model that are like
five times larger and the reason for
that is that we did the specialization
and so that's the first layer and then
if you think of like a second layer you
can think of verticals uh so if you want
to build a model which is not only good
at Arabic but also good at uh handling
legal cases in Saudi Arabia for instance
uh well you need to specializ specialize
it again so there's some extra work that
needs to be done in Partnership uh with
companies to make sure that now you not
only your system is good at at speaking
a certain language but it's good at
speaking a certain language and
understanding the Lego work that is done
in this language uh and so it's true for
any combination that you can think of of
vertical and language I see you want to
have like a medical diagnosis assistant
in French well you need to be good at
French but you also need to understand
how to be good at at uh speaking the
French language of Physicians right and
so those two things it's very hard to do
as a general purpose model provider if
this is true and what you're describing
is is real that I need the capabilities
to customize this AI layer on my local
Norms my local data which is fairly
sophisticated from a from a technical
capability perspective how would you
advise a big nation to think about this
the stack we're talking about the chips
the compute the data center the models
that sit on top the applications and
then ultimately the um what you were
describing as as the AI nurse or the AI
doctor and how how would you advise
someone that's a smaller Nation
differently I would say you need to own
the you need to I guess to buy and to
set up the horizontal part of the stack
so you need the infrastructure uh you
need the inference Primitives uh you
need the customization Primitives uh you
need the observability you need uh the
ability to connect GS to models uh to
connect models to sources of information
of real-time information those are
Primitives that are fairly well
factorized across uh the different
countries across the different
Enterprises and once you have that so
you these are things that can be bought
then you can start working then you can
start building you build from these
Primitives according to your values
according to your expertise and thanks
to your local talents the question is
where is the frontier in between what is
horizontal and horizontal if you're a
small Enterprise or a small uh country
you should probably buy and what is
vertical and specific to you and that's
definitely something that you need to
build you have to get it in your head
that it's not as hard as you think it is
first of all um because because the
technolog is getting better it's easier
could you imagine doing this 5 years ago
it's impossible could you imagine doing
this 5 years from now it'll be
trivial and so we're somewhere in that
middle the only question is do you have
to do it right the truth of it matter is
I hate onboarding employees and the
reason for that is because it takes a
lot of work but once you set up an HR
organization and Leadership mentoring
organization and
cesses then your ability to onboard
employees is easier and is
systematically more enjoy enjoyable for
everybody involved but in the very
beginning is hard setup is always hard
setup is always hard this is no
different um the only question is do you
need to do it if you if you want to be
part of the future and this is the most
consequential
technology of all time right not just
our time of all time digital
intelligence how much more valuable can
how much more important can it be and so
if you come to the conclusion this is
important to you then you have to engage
it as soon as you can learn it learn
along the way and just know that it's
getting easier and easier all the time
the fact of the matter is if we try to
do agentic systems even three years ago
it was incredibly hard right but agentic
systems are a lot easier today and all
of the tools necessary for cure rating
data sets for onboarding the digital
employees to evaluating the employees to
guard railing all of digital employees
all all of those are getting better all
the time the other thing about
technology is when it becomes faster
it's easier right you know could you
imagine back in the old days of course
you know I had the benefit of seeing
computers from its earliest days and the
the performance of the computers were so
frustratingly slow everything you did
was hard right but these days you know
the type of things we do is just it's
it's magical because it's also fast you
know and so whether it's it's um
uh motivated by your your institutional
need to engage the most consequential
technology of all time or the fact that
it's getting better all the time so it's
not that hard I think the number of
excuses is running out so let's talk
about that for a second because change
is hard I've got an endless list if I'm
a nation state leader I'm facing
increasing amounts of geopolitical risk
my my I don't know who my allies are
elections are coming there's any number
of things I've got to deal with but now
I let's say I understand that that this
is
important you guys spend so much time
talking to nation state leaders who are
thinking about what are the risks of
adopting AI too fast and and you're
right the Zeitgeist has shifted based on
the Paris action Summit it seemed like
people are there's there's a more a tone
of optimism more than there was a tone
of pessimism a year ago but what are the
most common questions you get from
nation state leaders when they're asking
you about risks and how to think about
them so I've heard several questions uh
but one of the risk is to see your
population start uh getting afraid of
the technology for fear of it replacing
them and and that that is something that
can actually be prevented uh if uh we
collectively make sure that everybody
get access to the technology and is
trained in using it so the the Skilling
of of the of the various citizens of the
population
is extremely important and stating AI as
an opportunity for them to actually work
better and showing actually the the
purpose of it through applications
through things that they can actually
install on their smartphone uh through
Public Services uh we're working for
instance with the French unemployment
system uh to actually connect
opportunities of jobs to an unemployed
unemployed people through AI agents that
are being actioned by obviously human
operators within the within the agency
and that is one opportunity that's a
very palatable opportunity for people to
find a job better right and so that's
part of the thing that uh can make sure
that population understand the
opportunity and the fact that AI is
really just a new change for them to
adopt just the same way they had to
adopt personal computers in the 90s and
internet in the in the two 2000s the
common aspect with these changes is that
you need people to uh embrace the
technology and I think the the biggest
problem that nation states may have is
to see AI increase the digital divide uh
that is already relatively big but if
you work together and if if done in this
in the right way we can make sure that
AI is actually reducing the digital
divide AI is a new way to program a
computer it is because by typing in some
words you can make the computer do
something just like we did in the past
right we used to type words and we make
computers do something and now you talk
to it yeah right now you can talk to it
you could do you can interact with it in
a whole lot of ways you can make the
computer do things for you a lot easier
today than it was before right the
number of people who could prompt chat
GPT and do productive things right just
from a human potential perspective is
vastly greater than the number of people
who can program C++
ever and therefore we have closed the
technology divide probably the greatest
equalizer we've seen it is by definition
right the greatest equalizer of
Technologies of all time but you still
need to have uh citizens to know about
it I think that's the thing I'm just
describing the fact yes I'm describing a
fact the fact is there are more people
who program computers using chat GPT
today than there are people who program
computers using C++ right that's a
fact in four short years that's a
straight up fact actually three years
yeah a straight up fact and so the fact
is this is the
greatest force of reducing the
technology divide the world's ever known
right it's just perceived and what
Arthur is saying the perception
through you know I don't know who I'm
talking about it and I don't know how
talking about it but the fact of the
matter is it is not stopping right it's
not stopping anything the number of
people who are actively using chat GPT
today is off the charts I think it's
terrific it's completely
terrific anybody who's talking about
anything else apparently isn't working
and so I I think people realize the
incredible capabilities of AI and and
how it's helping them with their work I
use it every single day I used it this
morning and so every single day I use it
and and I think that that uh deep
research is incredible right you know it
my goodness the the work that that um uh
Arthur and and all of the computer
scientists around the world are doing is
incredible and and and people know it
people are picking it up obviously right
just the number of active users um let
let's talk about open source for a bit
because both of you have talked quite
publicly about the importance of open
models in the context of sovereign AI at
Deep Mind you're part of the chinchilla
skating laws which were openly published
your co-founder gam created llama and
then last year Nvidia and mrr worked on
a jointly trained model called mrr Nemo
why are open models such a big part of
your focus because it's an horizontal
technology and um Enterprises and states
are going to be eventually willing to
deploy it on their own infrastructure uh
having this openness is is important
from a sovereignty perspective that
that's the first point and then the
second Point uh of importance is that uh
releasing open source models is a way to
accelerate progress and uh we created
mistal on the basis that what we've seen
during our early career when we were
doing AI in between 2010 and
2020 uh was an acceleration of progress
because every lab was building on top of
each other and that's something that
kind of disappeared uh with the first
large language models
uh from open AI in particular and so
spinning back that open flywheel of I
contribute something and then another
lab is contributing something else right
and then we iterate from that is the
reason why we created mistal and I think
we we did a good job at it because we we
started to release models and then meta
started to release models as well right
uh and then we had Chinese company like
deeps release uh Stronger models and
everybody benefit from it so coming back
to mral Nemo of um when difficulty of
creating AI models in an open way is
that this is more a cathedral than a
Bazar setting when it comes to open
source because you have large span to do
to build a model and so what we did with
Nvidia team is really to to to mix the
two teams together have them work on the
same infrastructure the same code have
the same problems and combine their
expertise to build the same model and
that has been very successful uh because
Nvidia brought a lot of things we didn't
know I think we brought things that
Nvidia didn't know and at the end of the
day we produced with something that was
at the time the best model for its size
right and so we really believe in such
collaborations and we think that we
should do them more and at a higher
scale and not only with only two uh
companies but probably with three or
four and that's the way open source is
going to Prevail yeah I completely agree
the the um benefit of Open
Source uh in addition to accelerating
and elevating the basic science the
basic Endeavor um of all of the general
models and the general capabilities is
the open- source versions also activate
a ton of Niche markets and Niche
Innovation uh all of a sudden Healthcare
Life Sciences physical sciences uh
robotics Transportation the number of
industries that were activated as a
result of Open Source capabilities are
sufficient good is incredible don't
ignore the the incredible capabilities
of Open Source particularly in The
Fringe the niche n but Mission critical
where data might be sensitive yeah it
could be for example in mining
energy right who's going to go create an
AI company to go mine energy energy is
really important but the mining of
energy is not that big of a market and
so open open source activates every
single one of them Financial Services it
turns out activates them healthare
defense you pick your favorites anything
that is Mission critical and that
requires uh to do one's own deployment
uh that potentially requires to do on on
on the edge deployment as well right um
and anything that requires uh some
strong auditing and the ability to do a
thorough evaluation of it you can
evaluate a model much better if you have
access to the weights than if you only
have access to apis and so if you want
to build certainty around the fact that
your system is going to be 100% accurate
I don't think you should be using a
close Source model and you have to
connect it into your flywheel how are
you going to connect your local data
yeah you have to connect it into your
own your local data your own local
experience the more you use it the
better it becomes that flywheel you you
can't do it without open source but
let's say I'm uh I'm a nation state
leader I've I've been considering open
source I'm starting to hear things like
hey open source is a threat to National
Security we should not be exporting our
models because these open models
actually give away a ton of um nation
state Secrets or more importantly the
bad guys can use these open models too
and so this is a threat to security
instead what we should be doing is
locking down maybe development amongst
two or three Labs that have the
infrastructure to to you know get
licenses from the government to do
training to do the right safety and
certification i' I've certainly been
hearing that a lot how should I think
about that versus what you're telling me
which is actually open is is better for
Mission critical Industries
collaboration in between Labs is going
to be uh to be to be critical for
Humanity success and if if one state
decides to lck things down what the only
thing that is going to happen is that
another state will take the leadership
uh because uh cutting yourself from the
open fly will is just too high as just
too high of a cost for you to maintain
competitivity if you do that this is a
debate that has occurred in in in the
United States and effectively if um if
there's some export control over weights
uh this is not going to stop any country
uh in Europe any any country in Asia to
to continue its progress right and they
will collaborate uh to actually
accelerate that progress so so I think
we just need to embrace the fact that
this is an horizontal technology uh very
similar to programming languages
programming languages they're all open
source right so I think AI just needs to
be open source in that respect we're
glad to see that at the AI Summit that
occurred last week for instance uh this
was very much on the agenda this
realization that we could accelerate
together by being more open about uh the
way we build the technology uh and and
so it's great to see that open source
has a lot of good days before it it is
impossible to
Control software is impossible to
control if you want to control it then
somebody else's will emerge and become
the
standard just as Arthur
mentioned and the question is is open
source safer open source enables more
transparency more researchers more
people to scrutinize scrutinized to work
the reason why every single company in
the world is built every cloud service
provider is built on open source is
because it is the safest technology of
all
give me an example of a public Cloud
today that's built on an infrastructure
stack that isn't open source you start
from open source you could customize it
right um but the benefit of Open Source
is the contribution of so many people
and the scrutiny you know very
importantly you can't just put any
random stuff into open source you get
laugh off laugh off the internet you've
got to put good stuff on the open source
because the scrutiny is in is intense
and so so I think the the open source
provides all of that great collaboration
to accelerate accelerate Innovation
escalate
Excellence uh ensure
transparency attract scrutiny all of
that improves safety in a sense you're
saying it's partly more secure because
as we've seen with open source databases
storage networking compute you get Mass
red teaming the whole world can help red
team yeah right your technology versus
just a small group of researchers inside
your company is that roughly right right
way to exactly
exactly by pulling a lot of
organizations together to come up with a
technology that they can all use and
specialize on their own domains right
you're forcing the technology to be good
for every one of them and so that means
you're removing biases you're you're
really making sure that the general
purpose models that you're building are
are as good as possible and don't have
failures and I think open source in that
respect is is also a way to reduce the
number of failure points if um as a
company today I decide to rely fully on
a single organization and on its uh
safety principles on its red teaming
organization as well kind of trusting it
a little too much whereas if I'm
building my technology on open source
models I'm trusting the world to make
sure that the basis on which I'm
building is secure uh so that's a
reduction of failure points and that's
obviously something that you need to do
as an Enterprise or as a
country um we're going to transition a
little bit now into company building
which is something a lot of people are
excited to hear from both of you about
so let's start with you Jensen you've
remarked that Nvidia is the smallest big
company in the
world what allow enabled you to operate
that way I mean our our architecture was
designed for several things it was
designed um to uh adapt well in a in a
world of change
either caused by us or affecting us and
the reason for that is because
technology changes fast and and if you
if you over correct on
controllability then you you are you
underserving A System's ability to uh
become agile and to adapt and and so our
company is is uh uses words like aligned
instead of use words like control um you
know I don't I don't know that one time
I've used the word control um in in
talking about the way that the company
Works uh we care about minimum
bureaucracy and uh we want to make our
processes as lightweight as possible now
all of that is so that we can en enhance
efficiency enhance agility and so on so
forth uh we avoid things like
words like division when Nvidia was
first started it was it was it was
Modern to talk about divisions right and
I hated the word divide you know why
would you create an organization that's
fundamentally divided I hated the word
business units the reason for that is
because why should anybody exist as one
uh why don't why don't you leverage as
much of the company's resources as
possible you know I wanted a a a system
that was organized uh much more like a
Computing unit like a computer uh to uh
uh deliver on an output as efficiently
as possible um and so the company's
organization looks a little bit like a
Computing stack and what is this
mechanism that we're trying to create
and in what environment are we trying to
survive in you know is this much more is
it is this much more like a you know
peaceful Countryside or is this like
much more like a Concrete Jungle you
know what kind of environment are you in
because the the type of the type of um
system you want to create should be
consistent with that and the thing that
always strikes me odd is that every
company's orc chart looks very similar
but they're all different things you
know one's a snake the other one's a
elephant the other one's a you know you
know a cheetah and everybody is is
supposed to be some somewhat different
in in that in that Forest but somehow
they all all same exact you know
structure same exact organization
doesn't seem to make sense to
me I agree that uh it feels like
companies have personalities and uh and
despite the fact that they're organized
sometimes similarly I should say that uh
obviously we we have a lot of things to
learn and I mean the company is not not
even two years old to I guess one one
challenge we have with M Tri and I think
our competitors have the same challenge
is that this is the one of the first
time that the software company is
actually a deep tech company uh that is
driven by science science doesn't have
the same time scales as software right
you need to operate uh on a monthly
basis uh sometimes you don't know uh
exactly when the thing will be ready uh
but on the other hand you have customers
that are asking when is the next model
coming up when is this capability going
to be available Etc so you need to
manage expectation and I think for um
like the the biggest challenge and I
think we're starting to do a good job at
it is to manage the the hinge in between
uh the product requirements and what the
science is able to do research and yes
and product research and product and you
don't want the research team to be fully
dedicated to making the product work you
need to work and I think we we we've
started to do it on making sure that you
have several frequencies in your company
you have fast frequencies on the produ
side iterating every week uh and you
have slow frequencies on the on the
science side that are looking at why
profoundly the product is selling on
certain domains and how they could fix
it through research through new data
through new architecture through new
paradigm um and that's I think that's
fairly new this is not something that
you would find in a typical SAS company
uh because because this is inherently a
science problem I mean Nvidia is one of
the most successful companies that have
over 30-year timeline has figured out a
way to keep science and research ahead
of the rest of the world whether it was
Cuda back in 2012 where that was
fundamental systems research or Cosmos
today which is now saying you know is
definitely state-ofthe-art on how
simulation should work out we've
harmonized exactly what Arthur just said
is is that is that fistic right for you
yeah we harmonized that inside our
company we have we have we have basic
research applied research and then we
have architecture and then we have
development and we have multiple layers
of it and and these layers are all
essential right and they all have their
own time clock in the case in the case
of basic research the the time the
frequency is could be quite low and yet
on the other hand all the way to the
product side we have a whole industry of
customers who are counting on us and so
we have to be very precise and somewhere
between basic research and discovering
discovering hopefully uh surprises that
nobody expects right on the one hand on
the other hand uh to be to be able to
deliver on what everyone expects
predictably okay um these two extremes
uh we manage uh harmoniously inside our
company there's so many fascinating
things about this Market but there's one
in particular that I want to call out
both of you have customers that are also
your
competitors right so and and those
competitors are huge and highly
capitalized Tech Giants Nvidia sells
gpus to AWS which is building its own
chips trainum and Arthur you're you know
your training models that you sell
through AWS and Azure who have funded
Labs like anthropic and open AI so how
do you win an environment like this and
how do you manage those relationships
because we talked about company building
internally but now I'm curious
externally how do you survive in this in
in this situation Jensen said it well
you give up control but you work on
alignment and uh despite the fact that
sometimes you have um uh like certain
companies can be competitors you may
have a line interest and you can work on
on specific agendas that are shared you
have to have your own
place um obviously
obviously these cloud service providers
aren't working with Arthur because they
already have the same thing they just
want two of the same things it's because
Arthur and mrol has a position in the
world that is unique to mrol and they
add value in a particular place that
that is unique a lot of the conversation
we've had today um are are areas that
that mstr and the work and and their
position in the world um makes them
uniquely good at and uh we are different
you know we're not just
another um Asic or and we we can do
things for the csps and do things with
the csps that are not possible for them
to do themselves for example nvidia's
architecture in every is in every cloud
and in a lot of ways we have the first
onboarding for uh amazing future
startups and the reason for that is
because by onboarding to Nvidia they're
they don't have to make a strategic or
business or otherwise commitment to a ma
major Cloud they could go into every
cloud and they could even decide to
build their own system if they like uh
because the economics turns out to be
better for them at some point or they
would like access to capabilities that
we have right that are some more
protective within the clouds and so so
whatever whatever the reasons are um in
order to be to be a good partner to
somebody you still have to have a unique
position you need to have a unique
offering and and I think Mr ra has a has
a very unique offering we have a very
unique offering and and our position in
the world is is um uh uh important to uh
even the people we compete against and
so so I I think when we when we are
comfortable within that and comfortable
with our own skin then we can be
excellent Partners to all of the all of
the csps and and then we want to see
them succeed um I know that it's a weird
thing to say when you see them as a
competitor which is the reason we don't
see them as a competitor we see them as
a collaborator who happens to compete
with us as well and so uh you know
probably the single most important thing
that we do for all the csps is bring
them business right and and that's what
a great Computing platform does we bring
people business I remember when Arthur
and I first met we sat down in London at
a late night restaurant and kind of
sketched out the plan for his series a
and we were kind of figuring out what he
would why he needed so much capital for
the series a which in hindsight was
remarkably efficient I think uh the mrr
series a we put together was half a
billion relative to other folks who had
to spend multiple billions to get to the
same place but I asked him you know what
chips would you like to run on and I
don't even think you you looked at me so
absurdly as if I had asked you a
question that how could it be an answer
other than Nvidia other than h100s and I
think that
ecosystem has been the startup ecosystem
that Nvidia has invested in creates so
much business for the clouds yeah what
is the philosophy that led you to invest
so deeply in startups and
Founders so early on even before anybody
knew about
them um two reasons I would say one the
first reason is that I rarely call us as
a GPU company what we make is a GPU but
I I think of Nvidia as a Computing
company if you're a Computing company
the most important thing you think about
is developers right if you're a chip
company the most important you think the
thing you think about is a chip and and
uh all of our all of our strategies all
of our actions all of our priorities all
of our Focus all of our investments 100%
of it is aligned with the attitude that
is developer first it's about the
Computing platform first another way of
saying ecosystem right and and so so uh
everything starts uh there everything
ends there GTC is a developers
conference right um and uh all of our
initiatives inside the company is
developer first so that's number one the
second thing is uh we were pioneering a
new Computing approach that that was
very alien to the world of general
purpose Computing and so this
accelerated Computing approach was
rather rather alien and and counter
intuitive and and rather awkward for a
very long time and and so we're
constantly seeking out looking for uh
the next incredible uh breakthrough the
next impossible thing to do without
accelerated Computing and so it's very
natural that I would find and would seek
out you know researchers and and and uh
uh great thinkers like Arthur uh because
it's you know I'm looking for the next
killer app and so that's kind of a natur
natural intuition Natural Instinct of
somebody who's creating something new
and so you know if if there's an amazing
uh uh computer science thinker that we
haven't engaged with uh you know that's
my bad we got to get on it from a
Computing perspective what are the most
significant Trends you see on the
horizon and in particular if you could
if for for an audience of folks who
might be leading who might be prime
ministers or presidents or Ministers of
it and some of the world's fastest
growing markets trying to understand
where Computing is going how would you
how would you guide them we're moving to
toward uh workloads that are more and
more asynchronous so workloads where you
give a task to uh an AI system and then
you you wait for it to do like 20
minutes of research before returning uh
so that's definitely changing a bit the
way uh you should be looking at um at
infrastructure uh because that creates
more load uh so it's um guess it's a
bull case for data centers and for
NVIDIA uh we
as I've said I guess in the beginning of
this episode um all of this is not going
to happen well if you don't have this
the right onboarding infrastructure for
the agents if you don't have a proper
way for your AI systems to learn about
the people they are interact with and to
learn from the people they interact with
right so that aspect of learning from
human interaction is going to be
extremely important in the coming uh in
the coming years and there's another
aspect which is around personalization
of having I guess models and systems
consolidate the representation of their
users to be as useful as possible I
think we are in the early stage of that
but that's going to change again pretty
profoundly the the interaction we have
with the machines that will know more
about us uh and know more about our
taste and how to be as useful as
possible toward us and as um I guess to
to to to close on that I think as a as a
prime minister or as a as a leader of of
a country I want to think about
education about making sure that I I
have a local talent pool uh that
understands AI enough uh to create
specialized AI systems and I want to
think about infrastructure both on the
physical side but also on the on the
software side so what are the right
Primitives what is the right partner to
work with that is going to provide you
with the platform of onboarding and so
those two things uh are important if you
have this and you have the talent and if
you do deep partnership
the economy uh of your state is going to
be profoundly changed the last 10 years
we've seen extraordinary change in
Computing um from hand coding to machine
learning from CPUs to gpus from software
to AI right we're across the entire
stack the entire industry is has been
completely transformed and we're going
through that still the next 10 years is
going to be incredible um of course you
know we the the industry has been
wrapped up in talking about scaling laws
and pre-training is important of course
and continues to be um now we have
post-training right and posttraining is
is thought experiments and practice and
tutoring and coaching and um all of the
skills that we use uh as humans to learn
you know the the idea that that um uh
thinking and agentic and robotic systems
are now just around the corner is really
quite exciting and so so the amount of
what it means to Computing is is very
profound and uh and that's where we've
spent the last you know people are
surprised that that um uh that Blackwell
is such a great leap over Hopper and the
reason for that is because we built
black wal for
inference and at a just in time because
all of a sudden uh thinking is such a s
such a big Computing
load and and so that's one layer is is a
Computing layer the next layer is the
the type of AIS that we're going to see
um there's the agentic AI the
informational digital worker AIS um but
we now have physics AI That's making
great progress and then there's physical
AI That's making great progress and uh
physics AI is of course uh things that
are that are uh that obey the the uh uh
and understand the the the physical laws
and and the atomic laws and the chemical
laws and you know all of all of the
various physical sciences are going to
see some great breakthroughs and I'm
very excited about that that affects
industry that affects science uh affects
Higher Education and Research and and
then physical ai ai that understand the
nature of the physical world you know
from from from F friction to inertia the
cause and effect you know object
permanence those kind of basic things
that that humans have common sense but
most AIS don't and and so I think that
that going to enable a whole bunch of
robotic systems that are going to have
great implications in manufacturing and
others you know the US economy is is
very heavily weighted on on knowledge
workers and and yet many of the other
countries are very heavily weighted on
on um uh manufacturing right and uh and
so I I think for for many of the prime
ministers and and the leaders of
countries to realize that that uh the
AIS that they need
uh to transform and to revolutionize
their industries that are so vital to
them whether it's energy focused or
manufacturing focused is just around the
corner and they ought to stay very alert
uh to this and I would encourage people
not to not to um
overr uh the technology and and
sometimes when you over admire a
technology overr the technology you
don't end up engaging it you're afraid
of it somehow um don't don't this is you
know the some of the things that we said
today about about AI closing the
technology divide is is Gen is really
something that i' to be recognized this
is of such incredible National interest
that you have the responsibility to
engage it anyhow exciting times
ahead that was incredible thank you both
so much for making time if they want if
they want to go learn more they want to
figure out how to partner with with the
two companies call us you kidding me you
can call us yes am I right the two
start with listening to this podcast and
then giving them a speed dial put their
numbers in the in the show notes Jensen
nvidia.com
job
done you heard it here we're very risk
on
to I can I can attest to that all right
thank you so much all right thank you
all right thank you thank you so much
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The video discusses the concept of 'Sovereign AI,' emphasizing that AI is a general-purpose and cultural technology that nations and organizations must actively build and control rather than outsource. Jensen Huang and Arthur Mensch highlight the importance of developing local, specialized AI infrastructures, using open-source models to ensure sovereignty, transparency, and the ability to tailor AI to national or corporate values. They advocate for 'digital intelligence' as a new essential infrastructure, comparable to electricity, and encourage leaders to actively engage with AI technology to avoid digital divide risks.
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