US-China AI race: Nvidia CEO warns US may lag due to sentiment; Cites chip, model edge
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns the US risks losing the AI race to China due to public sentiment and infrastructure challenges. While the US leads in chips and AI models, China's rapid development and lead in open-source models pose significant threats. Huang emphasizes the need for faster application and diffusion of AI technology to maintain a competitive edge.
File photo: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (Picture credit: AP)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently warned that US may loose the AI race to China and one of the reasons could be the Americans. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) earlier this month, Huang said that the public sentiment in the US towards AI differs sharply than that in China.
If If you were to do a poll of their society and ours, and you ask them is AI likely to do more good than harm, the CEO of world’s most valuable company said “in their (China’s) case 80% would say AI will do more good than harm. In our (US) case, it'd be the other way around.”“And that area I think that we need to be careful not to fall behind in the application and the diffusion of AI, because in the end whoever applies the technology first and most wins that industrial revolution,” he added.
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During the interview, Huang breaks down the US-China AI competition into what he calls a "five-layer cake." As shared by an X user, Huang points at five critical vulnerabilities that US may face in the AI race. Other than the public sentiment (shared above), these included: energy, chips, infrastructure, and models. China, the user writes with twice as much energy as the US, makes “no sense” to Huang. “Twice as much energy as we have as a nation.
And they’re – our economy’s larger than theirs. It makes no sense to me,” he said, adding “without energy how do we build chip plants, computer system plants, and these AI datacenters? We call them AI factories.”
Jensen Huang: US is ‘generationg ahead’ of China in chips
Second critical aspect of winning AI race, as per Jensen Huang, is chips which he says is that the US is “generations ahead”. “Number three, infrastructure. If you want to build a datacenter here in the United States, from breaking ground to standing up an AI supercomputer is probably about three years.
They can build a hospital in a weekend. That’s a real challenge,” Huang stated in the interview. Another ‘layer’ Huang highlighted is the AI models which he said are “unquestionably world class” in the US. “We are probably six months ahead,” but China is ahead of the US on open source models. “China is well ahead – way ahead on open source. Now, the reason why open source is so important is because without open source, startups can’t thrive, university researchers can’t do research, you can’t teach AI, scientists can’t use AI,” Huang said.