LONDON: Nvidia Corp chief executive officer (CEO) Jensen Huang has said he would halt the supply of chips to a customer that was developing unsafe artificial intelligence (AI) software, though he doesn’t believe the current level of concern about the technology is warranted.
“It’s a hypothetical, but yes,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in London when asked if he’d stop supplying an irresponsible developer.
“But before you do so, you would have a conversation. We don’t run other people’s companies, and there’s a limit to the judgment we apply to other companies’ use of our technology. Our technology is general-purpose.”
Nvidia is the dominant supplier of artificial intelligence accelerators, the chips used to train and run AI models. That’s put it at the centre of a debate over whether the software risks growing too powerful and slipping out of human control.
AI executives such as Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei have proposed an industry-wide slowdown to address the concerns.
Huang, who’s on a tour through Europe ahead of a company event in Berlin, said the fears about AI safety are part of growing pains for an industry expanding quickly. The chief executive said he believes that the software can be controlled and deployed safely.
As part of its commitment to keeping AI safe, Nvidia is donating US$250mil over five years toward research in the United Kingdom into the issue.
The support will come in the form of access to time on advanced computers.
Various academic institutions in that country, including the University of Oxford and University College London, will study safeguards and ways to control AI agents.
“Many of the young companies are going through growing pains, and they’re growing incredibly fast,” Huang said.
“There’s an accountability, responsibility that goes along with building companies they’re just growing into.” — Bloomberg
