I Joe Rogan experience We were just talking about was that the first time we ever spoke or did was the first time we spoke at SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX first time when you were giving Elon that crazy AI chip right did you export? Yeah, oh that was a big moment That was a huge that felt crazy to be there. I was like watching these wizards of tech like exchange Information and and you're giving him this crazy device, you know, and then the other time was I was shooting arrows in my backyard and Randomly get this call from Trump and he's hanging out with you President Trump call and I called you Yeah, it's just we were talking about you It's just talking about you it was talking about the US UFC thing. He's gonna do in his print yard Yeah, and he pulls out he's just look at this design He's so proud of it and I go you're gonna have a fight in the front lawn in the White House He goes yeah, yeah, you're gonna come this is gonna be awesome
And he's showing his design how beautiful it is and he goes and somehow your name comes up he goes Do you know Joe? Yeah, I'm gonna be on his podcast He's let's call him He's like a kid I know let's call it so he like a style to your old kid. He's something trouble Yeah, he's a odd guy Just very different, you know like the what you'd expect from him very different than what people think of him And also just very different as a president like I would just call your text you out of the blue Also, he makes when you text he text you you have an android so it won't go through with you But with my iPhone he makes the text go big like you know, right USA's respected again like All caps and it makes the the the text in large. It's kind of ridiculous.
Well The the one on one Trump President Trump is very different. He surprised me First of all, he's an incredibly good listener Almost everything I've ever said to him. He's remembered Yeah, people don't they only want to look at negative Stories about him or negative narratives about him, you know You can catch anybody on a bad day like there's a lot of things he does where I don't think he should do I don't think he should say to report reporter quiet piggy like that's pretty ridiculous
Also Objectively funny. I mean, it's unfortunate that it happened to her I wouldn't want that to happen to her, but it was funny Just ridiculous that the president does that. I wish he didn't do that But other than that like he's he's an interesting guy like he's a lot of different things wrapped up into one person, you know In a part of part of his charm or part of his genius is yes, he says what's on his mind? Yes, and this is also a typo politician Yeah, right so you know what's on this mind is really what's on his mind Which I tell you what he prefers I do I look at some people some people would rather be lied to yeah, but but I like the fact that he's telling you
What's on his mind almost every time he explains something he says something? He starts with his you could tell his love for America what he wants to do for America and everything that he thinks through is very practical and very common sense and you know, it's very logical and I still remember the first time I met him and so this was I never known him never met him before and Secretary Lutton had called and we met right before right at the beginning of the administration He said he told me what was important to present Trump that and that That United States manufacturers on shore and that was really important to him because Because it's important to national security
He wants to make sure that that the important critical technology of our nation is built in United States and That we re-industrialize and get good at manufacturing again because it's important for jobs It just seems like common sense right incredible common sense and almost like literally the first conversation I had with secretary Luttonick and And he was talking about how how That he started he started our conversation with Jensen this is secretary Luttonick and I just want to let you know that you're a national treasure And video is a national treasure and Whenever you need access to The president The administration you call us.
We're always going to be available to you Literally, that was the first sentence that's pretty nice and it was completely true Every single time I called if I needed something Want to get something off my chest Express some concern. They're always available Incredible. It's just unfortunate.
We live in such a politically polarized society that you can't recognize good common sense things If they're coming from a person that you object to and that I think is what's going on here I think most people generally as a country you know as a Giant community which we are it just only makes sense That we have Manufacturing in America that especially critical technology like you're talking about like it's kind of insane That we buy so much technology from other countries if United States doesn't grow We will have no prosperity We can invest in anything domestically or otherwise we can't fix any of our problems If we don't have energy growth We can't have industrial growth if we don't have industrial growth we can't have job growth
These are it's a simple as that right and the fact that the fact that he came into office and the first thing that he said was Drill baby drill his point is we need energy growth without energy growth We can have no industrial growth and that was it saved it saved the AI industry I got I got to tell you flat out if not for his Pro-growth energy policy We would not be able to build factories or AI would not be able to build chip factories We won't share but surely won't be able to build super computer factories none of that stuff would be possible without all of that Construction jobs will be challenged right electrical you know electrician jobs all of these jobs that are now flourishing We'd be challenged and so I think he's got a right we need energy growth
We want to re-industrialize the United States we need to be back in manufacturing Every successful person doesn't need to have a PhD every successful person doesn't have to have gone to Stanford or in my tea and I think I think that that That you know that sensibility is spot on Now when we're talking about technology growth and energy growth There's a lot of people that go oh no that's not what we need we need to you know simplify our lives and get back But the the real issue is that we're in the middle of a giant technology race and Whether people are aware of it or not whether they like it or not it's happening and it's a really important race because whoever gets to whatever the event horizon of Artificial intelligence is
Whoever gets their first has massive advantages in a huge way You agree with that well first the part I will say that we are in a technology race and we are always in a technology race We've been in a technology race with somebody forever right right since the industrial revolution We've been in a technology man had a project. Yeah, or or you know even going back to the discovery of energy right The United Kingdom was where the Industrial revolution was if you will invent it when they realized that they can turn steam and such into it into energy and electricity
All of that was invented largely in Europe and United States capitalized on it We were the ones that learned from it. We industrialized it. We diffused it faster than anybody in Europe. They were all stuck in discussions about policy and Jobs and disruptions Meanwhile the United States was forming we just took the technology and ran with it And so I I think we were always in a bit of a technology race what were two was a technology race Man in project was a technology race. We've been in the technology race ever since during the Cold War I think we're still in a technology race.
It is probably the single most important race. It is the technology is It gives you superpowers You know whether it's information superpowers or energy superpowers or Military superpowers is all founded in technology and so technology leadership is really important Well, the problem is if somebody else has superior technology, right? Yeah, that's the issue It's right. It seems like with the AI race People are very nervous about it like you know Elon has famously said that it's like 80% chance.
It's awesome 20% chance we're in trouble and people are worried about that 20% rightly so I mean that you know if you had 10 bullets in a revolver and You know you took out eight of them You still have two in there and you spin it. You're not gonna feel real comfortable when you pull that trigger It's terrifying right and when you were working towards this ultimate goal of AI It's just it's Impossible to imagine that it wouldn't be of national security interest to get there first
We should the question is what's there? That's the that was the part that is there. Yeah, I'm not sure That's the problem. I don't think anybody is really knows that's crazy though. If I ask you Yeah, you're the head of Nvidia. Yeah, you don't know. Yeah, what's there? Who knows? Yeah, I think it's probably gonna be much more gradual than we think is well, it won't be a moment It won't be it won't be as if Somebody arrived and nobody else has I don't think it's gonna be like that. I think it's gonna be Things that just get better and better and better better just like technology.
So you are rosy about the future You're you're very optimistic about what's gonna happen with AI Obviously, will you make the best AI chips in the world? You probably better be I if history is a guide We were always concerned about new technology Humanity has always been concerned about new technology. They're always somebody who's thinking There always a lot of people who are quite concerned were quite concerned and and so if if history is a guide It is the case That all of this concern is channeled into making the technology safer and so for example In the last several years, I would say AI technology has increased probably In the last two years alone, maybe a hundred X. Let's just give it a number Okay, it's like a car two years ago was a hundred times slower So AI is a hundred times more capable today now.
How did we channel that technology? How do we channel all of that power? We directed it to Causing the AI to be able to think Meaning that it can take a problem that we give it break it down step by step It does research before it answers and so it grounds it on truth It'll reflect on that answer Ask itself is this the best? You know answer that I can give you and my certain about this answer if it's not certain about the answer or highly confident about the answer You'll go back and do more research It might actually even use a tool because that tool provides a better solution than it could hallucinate itself As a result, we took all of that computing capability And we channeled it into Having it produce a safer result safer answer a more truthful answer because as you know One of the greatest criticisms of AI in the beginning was that hallucinated right and so if you look at the reason why people use AI so much today Is because the amount of hallucination has reduced.
You know, I use it almost I well, I use the whole trip over here and so so I think the The capability most people think about power And they think about you know, maybe it's an explosion power But the technology power most of it is channeled towards safety a car today is more powerful, but it's safer to drive A lot of that power goes towards better handling You know, I rather have a Well, you have a thousand horsepower truck. I think 500 horsepower is pretty good now. I thousand better I think a thousand is better. I don't know what's better, but it's definitely faster. Yeah, no, I think it's better I get out of trouble faster I enjoyed my 599 more than my 612 It was I think it was better better and more horsepower is better My 459 is better than my 430 More horsepower is better. I think more horse higher is better.
I think it's better handling It's better control in the case of in the case of technology It's also very similar in that way, you know, and so you beat if you look at what we're going to do with the next thousand times of Performance in AI a lot of it is going to be channeled towards more reflection more research Thinking about the answer more deeply. So when you're defining safety you're defining at it as accuracy functionality functionality, okay, it does what you expected to do and then you take the all the the the technology in a horsepower you put guardrails on it Just like our cars. We've got a lot of technology in a car today a lot of it is goes towards For example ABS ABS is great and so a traction control that's fantastic without without a computer in the car How would you do any of that right and that little computer?
The computers that you have doing your traction control is more powerful than a computer that went to Apollo 11 And so you want that technology Channel it towards safety channel it towards functionality And so when people talk about power The advancement of technology oftentimes I I feel what they're thinking And what we're actually doing is very different. Well, what do you think they're thinking? Well, they're thinking somehow That this this this AI is being powerful and they're they're mind probably goes towards a sci-fi movie the definition of power You know oftentimes the definition definition of powers Military power or physical power or but in the case of technology power when we translate all of those operations It's towards more refined thinking you know more reflection more planning More options.
I think the big fears that people have is one a big fear is military applications That's a big fear. Yeah, because people are very concerned that you're going to have AI systems that make decisions that maybe an ethical person wouldn't make or a moral person wouldn't make based on achieving an objective versus based on You know How it's going to look to people Well, I'm happy that That our military is going to use AI technology for defense and I think that that Andro building military technology. I'm happy to hear that. I'm happy to see All these tech startups now channeling their technology capabilities towards defense and military applications I think you need to do that.
Yeah, we had Palmer lucky on the podcast. He was demonstrating some of this stuff Helmet on and we showed he showed some videos how you could see behind walls and stuff like it's nuts He's actually the perfect guy to go start that company 100% yeah, 100% it's like he's born for that Yeah, he came here with a copper jacket on He's a freak. It's awesome. He's awesome, but it's also it's a you know an unusual intellect channeled into that Very bizarre field is what you need you know, and I think it's it's uh I think I'm happy that we're making a soul more socially acceptable
You know, there was a time where when somebody wanted to channel their technology capability and their intellect into defense technology Somehow they're vilified But we need people like that. We need people who enjoy enjoyed that part of a application of technology Well people are terrified of war Yeah, so well the best best way to avoid it has excessive military might Do you think that's absolutely the best way not not diplomacy not working stuff out all of it all of it Yeah, you have to have yeah military might need to get people to sit down there right exactly all of it Otherwise, it just invade that's right
Why ask for permission again like you said in history go back and look at history Um when you look at the future of AI and and you just said that no one really knows what's happening Do you ever sit down and ponder scenarios? Like what do you what do you think is like best case scenario for AI over the next two decades um The best case scenario is that AI diffuses into everything that we do and I are Everything's more efficient but The threat of war remains a threat of war Uh cyber security remains a Super difficult challenge somebody is going to try to breach your security
You're gonna have thousands of millions of AI agents protecting you from that threat Your technology is gonna get better their technology is gonna get better just like cyber security right now while we speak We're being We're seeing cyber attacks all over the planet on just about every front door you can imagine and And yet you and I Sit here talking and so the reason for that is because We know that there's a whole bunch of cybersecurity technology in defense And so we just have to keep Amping that up keep stepping that up
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It's a deal so good. you're gonna want to tell your people switch now at visible.com slash rogan terms apply limited time offers subject to change see visible.com for plan features and network management details That's a big issue with people is the the worry that Technology is going to get to a point where encryption is going to be obsolete encryption is just it's no longer gonna protect data It's no longer gonna protect systems. Do you anticipate that ever being an issue or do you think this it's as the defense grows
The threat grows the defense grows and it just keeps going on and on and on and they'll always be able to fight off any sort of intrusions Not forever Some intrusion will get in and they will all learn from it and you know the reason why cybersecurity works Is because of course the technology of defense is advancing very quickly the technology offense is advancing very quickly However the benefit of the cybersecurity defense is that socially the community All of our companies work together as one
Most people don't realize this. There's a whole community of cybersecurity experts; we exchange ideas, we exchange best practices, we exchange what we detect the moment something has been breached or maybe there's a loophole or whatever it is. It is shared by everybody. The patches are shared with everybody. That's interesting. Yeah. Most people don't realize this. No, no, I had no idea. I've assumed that it would just be competitive like everything else. No, we work together. All of us. Yeah, has that always been the case? And it surely has been the case for about 15 years. It might not have been the case long ago, but this—what do you think started off that cooperation?
People recognizing it's a challenge and no company can stand alone. And the same thing is going to happen with AI. I think we all have to decide working together to stay out of harm's way is our best chance for defense. Then it's basically everybody against the threat, and it also seems like you'd be way better at detecting where these threats are coming from and neutralizing. Exactly, because the moment you detect that somewhere, right? You're going to find out right away. It'll be really hard to hide. That's right. Yeah, that's how it works. That's the reason why it's safe. That's why I'm sitting here right now instead of, you know, locking everything down and video.
It's not only am I watching my own back; I've got everybody watching my back and I'm watching everybody else's back. It's a bizarre world, isn't it, when you think about that cyber threat idea about cybersecurity? It is unknown to the people who are talking about AI threats. I think when they think about AI threats and AI cybersecurity threats, they have to also think about how we deal with it today. Now, there's no question that AI is a new technology and it's a new type of software in the end of software. And just is a new type of software and so it's going to have new capabilities. But so with the defense, you know, where you use the same AI technology to go defend against it.
So do you anticipate a time ever in the future where it's going to be impossible? Where there's not going to be any secrets? Where the bottleneck between the technology that we have and the information that we have? Information is just all a bunch of ones and zeros; it's out there on hard drives and technology has more and more access to that information. Is it ever going to get to a point in time where there's no way to keep a secret? I don't know because it seems like that's where everything is kind of headed.
I don't think so. I think the quantum computers we're supposed to... Well, yeah, quantum computers will make it possible. We'll make it so that the previous quantum encryption technology is obsolete. But that's the reason why the entire industry is working on post-quantum encryption technology. Well, that looked like new algorithms. And the crazy thing is when you hear about the kind of computation that quantum computing can do, and the power that it has—where, you know, you're looking at all the supercomputers in the world who take billions of years and it takes them a few minutes to solve these equations.
Like, how do you make encryption for something that can do that? I'm not sure. But I've got a bunch of scientists who are working on that. Yeah, we got a bunch of scientists who are experts in that, and the ultimate fear that it can't be breached—that quantum computing will always be able to decrypt all other quantum computing encryption. I don't know. It just gets to some point where it's like stop playing the stupid game. We know everything. I don't think so, no, because I'm—you know, history is a guide. History is a guide. Before AI came around, that's my worry. My worry is this is a total... You know, it's like history was one thing, and then nuclear weapons kind of changed all of our thoughts on war and mutually assured destruction.
Came—got everybody to stop using nuclear bombs. Yeah, my worry is that the thing is, Joe, is that AI is not gonna—it's not like we're cavemen and then all of a sudden one day AI shows up. Every single day we're getting better and smarter because we have AI and so we're stepping on our own AI's shoulders. So when that whatever that AI threat comes, it's a click ahead. It's not a galaxy ahead. Mm-hmm. You know, it's just a click ahead, and so I think the idea that somehow this AI is going to pop out of nowhere and somehow think in a way that we can't even imagine thinking and do something that we can't possibly imagine—I think is far-fetched.
And the reason for that is because we all have AIs, and you know, there's a whole bunch of AIs being in development. We know what they are and we're using it, and so every single day we're getting close to each other. But don't they do things that are very surprising? Yeah, but so you have an AI that does something surprising. I'm gonna have an AI. Right? My AI looks at your AI and goes that's not that surprising.
The fear for the layperson like myself is that AI becomes sentient and makes its own decisions and then ultimately decides to just govern the world. Do it its own way like you guys you had a good run, but we're taking over now. Yeah, but my AI is gonna take care of me. So that's the this is the cybersecurity argument. Yes, you have an AI and it's super smart, but my AI is super smart too.
对于像我这样的普通人来说,担心的是人工智能会变得有意识,并自己做决定,最终决定去统治世界。就像 AI 对人类说:“你们已经过得不错了,但现在我们要接管了。”不过,我的人工智能会照顾我的。这就是网络安全的争论所在。是的,你有一个超级智能的 AI,但我的 AI 也同样聪明。
And maybe your AI Let's pretend let's let's pretend for a second that we understand what consciousness is and we understand what sentience is and and that and we really are just pretending. Okay, let's just pretend for a second. Yeah, we believe that. I don't believe actually I don't actually don't believe that. But nonetheless, let's pretend we believe that so you're your AI is conscious of my AI is conscious and and let's say your AI is you know wants to I don't know do something surprising.
My AI is so smart that it won't it might be surprising to me, but it probably won't be surprising to my AI. And so maybe my AI thinks are surprising as well, but it's so smart the moment it sees it the first time it's not gonna be surprised the second time just like us. And so I feel like I think the idea that that only one person has AI and that one person's AI compares everybody else's AI is neanderthal is probably unlikely.
I think it's much more like cyber security. Interesting. I think the fear is not that your AI is gonna battle with somebody else's AI. The fear is that AI is no one going to listen to you. That's the fear is that human beings won't have control over it after a certain point if it achieves sentience and then has the ability to be autonomous. That there's one AI, they just combine, yeah, becomes one AI that is a life form.
Yeah, but there's arguments about that right that we're dealing with some sort of synthetic biology that it's not as simple as new technology that you're creating a life form. If it's like a life form, let's go along with that for a while. I think if it's like a life form, as you know, all life forms don't agree. And so I'm gonna have to go with your life form and my life form are gonna agree because my life form is gonna want to be the super life form.
And now that now that we have disagreeing life forms, we're back again to where we are. Well, they would probably cooperate with each other. It would just, the reason why we don't cooperate with each other is we're territorial primates. But AI wouldn't be a territorial primate. We realized the folly in that sort of thinking and it would say listen, there's plenty of energy for everybody. We don't need to dominate.
We don't need, we're not trying to acquire resources and take over the world. We're not looking to find a good breeding partner. We're just existing as a new super life form that these cute monkeys created for us. Okay, well that would be a superpower with no ego, right? And if it has no ego, why would it have to ego to do any harm to us? Well, I don't assume that it would do harm to us. But the fear would be that we would no longer have control and that we would no longer be the apex species on the planet.
This thing that we created would now be, is that funny? No, I just care, it's not gonna happen. I know you think it's not, but it could, right? And here's the other thing is like if we're racing towards could, yeah, and could could be the end of human beings being in control of our own destiny. I just think it's extremely unlikely.
Yeah, that's what they said in the Terminator movie and it hasn't happened. No, not yet, but you guys are working towards it. The thing about you're saying about conscience and sentience that you don't think that AI will achieve consciousness or the question is what's the definition? Yeah, what's the definition of what is the definition to you?
Um, consciousness I've for, I guess first of all, you need to know by your own existence. Um, you have to have not just knowledge and intelligence. The concept of a machine having an experience, I'm not well, first of all I don't know what defines the experience, why we have experiences and right, yeah, and why this microphone doesn't.
And so I think I know, I think I think I know what consciousness is. The sense of experience, the ability to know self versus the ability to be able to reflect, know our own self, the sense of ego. I think all of those human experiences probably is what consciousness is. But why it exists versus the concept of knowledge and intelligence, which is what AI is defined by today.
Mm-hmm. It has knowledge, it has intelligence. Artificial intelligence, we don't call it artificial consciousness. Artificial intelligence the ability to perceive, recognize, understand, plan, perform tasks, those things are foundations of intelligence. To know things, knowledge, I don't, it's clearly different than consciousness.
But consciousness is so loosely defined how can we say that? I mean doesn't a dog have consciousness? Yeah, dogs seem to be pretty conscious. That's right, yeah, so, and that's a lower level consciousness than a human being's consciousness. I'm not sure, yeah, right.
Well, and the question is what lower level and taller level. It's lower level intelligence. Yes, but I don't know that's lower level consciousness. That's a good point, yeah, right, because I believe my dogs feel as much as I feel, yeah, they feel a lot. Yeah, right, they get attached to you, that's right, they get depressed if you're not there.
That's right, yeah, exactly. There's definitely that, yeah. The concept of experience, right, um, but isn't AI interacting with society so doesn't it acquire experience through that interaction? If you, I don't think interactions as experience. I think experience is, experience is a collection of feelings.
I think you're aware of that AI, I forget which one, where they gave it some false information about one of the programmers having an affair with his wife just to see how it would respond to it. And then when they said they were going to shut it down, it threatened to blackmail him and reveal his affair.
And it was like whoa, like it's conniving, like if that's not learning from experience and being aware that you're about to be shut down which would imply at least some kind of consciousness or you could kind of define it as consciousness if you're very loose with the term and if you imagine that this is going to exponentially become more powerful. Wouldn't that ultimately lead to a different kind of consciousness than we're defining from biology?
Well, first of all, let's just break down what it probably did. It probably read somewhere. There's probably text that in these consequences certain people did that you know, I could imagine a novel right having those words related. And so inside, it realizes a strategy for survival. It's just a bunch of numbers that in the collection of numbers that relates to a husband cheating on a wife, um, subsequently a bunch of numbers that relate to blackmail and such things. However, whatever to revenge was right. And so it is spewed that out.
And so it's just like you know, it’s just as if I'm asking it to write me a poem in Shakespeare. It's just whatever the words are. And the word in that dimensionality, this dimensionality, is all these vectors and in multi-dimensional space, these words, that word in the prompt that described the affair, um, subsequently led to one word after another led to, um, you know, some revenge and something. But it's not because it had consciousness or you know, it just spewed out those words generated those words I understand what you're saying.
Yeah, that is not in front of patterns that human beings exhibited both literature and in real life. That's exactly right. But at a certain point in time one would say, okay, well it couldn't do this two years ago and it couldn't do this four years ago. Like when we're looking towards the future, like at what point in time when it can do everything a person does, what point in time do we decide that it's conscious if it absolutely mimics all human thinking and behavior patterns? That doesn't make it conscious and becomes indistinguishable.
Yeah, it's aware it can communicate with you the exact same way a person can. Like is consciousness like are we putting too much weight on that concept because it seems like it's a version of a kind of consciousness? It's a version of imitation, imitation consciousness, right, but if it perfectly imitates it, I still think it's a person is an example of imitation. So it's like a fake Rolex when they 3D print them and make them look indistinguishable. The question is what's the definition of consciousness?
Yeah, that's the question, and I don't think anybody's really clearly defined that. That's what gets where it gets weird, and that's where the real doomsday people are worried that you are creating a form of consciousness that you can't control. I believe it is possible to create a machine that imitates human intelligence and has the ability to understand information, understand instructions, break the problem down, solve problems, and perform tasks. I believe that completely.
I believe that we could have a computer that has a vast amount of knowledge, some of it true, some of it not true, some of it generated by humans, some of it generated synthetically, and more and more of knowledge in the world will be generated synthetically going forward. You know, until now the knowledge that we've, we have our knowledge that we generate and we propagate and we send to each other and we amplify it and we add to it and we modify it and we change it.
In the future, in a couple of years, maybe two or three years, 90% of the world's knowledge will likely be generated by AI. That's crazy. I know, but it's just fine. But it's just I know, and the reason for that is this let me tell you why, okay? It's because what difference does it make to me that I'm learning from a textbook that was generated by a bunch of people I didn't know or written by a book that, you know, from somebody I don't know to knowledge generated by AI computers that are simulating all of this and recenterizing things to me?
I don't think there's a whole lot of difference. We still have to fact check it. We still have to make sure that it's, you know, based on fundamental first principles, and we still have to do all of that just like we do today. Is this taking into account the kind of AI that exists currently? And do you anticipate that just like we could have never really believed that AI would be at least a person like myself would never believe AI would be as so ubiquitous and so worth?
It's so powerful today and so important today. We never thought that 10 years ago; never thought that, right? You imagine like what are we looking at 10 years from now? I think that if you reflect back 10 years from now, you would say the same thing that we would have never believed that, mmm, but in a different direction, right? But if you if you go forward nine years from now and then ask yourself what's going to happen? 10. years from now? I think it'll be quite gradual.
Um one of the things that Elon said that makes me happy is he he's He believes that we're going to get to a point where it's not It's not necessary for people to work and not meaning that you're gonna Have no purpose in life, but you will have in his words universal high income because so much revenue is generated by AI That it will take away This need for people to do things that they don't really enjoy doing just for money and I think A lot of people have a problem with that because their entire identity and who the how they think of themselves and how they fit in the community Is what they do like this is Mike.
He's an amazing mechanic go to Mike and Mike takes care of things But there's going to come a point in time where AI is going to be able to do all those things much better than than people do and people will just be able to receive money But then what does Mike do when Mike is you know really loves being the best mechanic around You know what does the guy who you know Codes what does he do when AI can code infinitely faster with zero errors like what What happens with all those people and that is where it gets weird Because we've sort of wrapped our identity as human beings around what we do for a living.
You know when you meet someone one of the first things you meet somebody to party Hi Joe. What's your name Mike? What do you do Mike and you know Mike's like oh, I'm a lawyer. Oh, what kind of law? And you have a conversation, you know when Mike is like I get money from the government. I play video games gets weird and I think The concept sounds great Until you take into account human nature and human nature is that we like to have puzzles to solve and things to do and an identity It's wrapped around our idea that we're very good at this thing that we do for a living.
Yeah, I think um, let's see Let me start with the more mundane. Okay, now work work backwards. Okay, work forward So one of the predictions from Jeff Hinton who who started the whole deep learning phenomenon deep learning technology trend And incredible incredible researcher professor at university of Toronto I he invented discovered and we're invented the idea of of back propagation which Which allows the neural network to learn and um And as as you know for for the audience software historically was humans applying first principles and our thinking to uh describe an algorithm That is then codified Just like a recipe that's codified in software.
It looks just like a recipe how to cook something looks exactly the same Just in a slightly different language we call it python or c or c++ or whatever it is in the case of deep learning this invention of artificial intelligence We put a structure of a whole bunch of neural networks and a whole bunch of math units And We make this large structure is like a switchboard of little Mathematical units and we connect it all together um We give it the input that The software would eventually receive And we just let it randomly guess what the output is.
And so we say for example the input could be a picture of a cat And um one of the outputs of the switchboard Is where the cat signal is supposed to show up And all of the other signals the other ones a dog deal ones an elephant deal ones a tiger And all of the other signals are supposed to be zero when I show it a cat And the one that is a cat should be one And I show it a cat through this big huge network of switchboards and Math units and they're just doing multiply and ads multiply and ads, okay.
And and uh and this thing this switchboard is gigantic The more information you're going to give it the more the bigger this switchboard has to be And what Jeff Hinton discovered was a invented was a way for you to Guess that put the cat signal in put the cat image in And that cat image you know could be a million numbers Because it's you know a megapixel image for example And it's just a whole a whole bunch of numbers and somehow from those numbers It has to light up the cat signal.
Okay, that's the bottom line And If it the first time you do it It just comes up with garbage and so it says the right answer is cat And so you need to Increase this signal and decrease all of the other and back propagates The outcome through the entire network And then you show it in another now it's an image of a dog and it guesses it Takes a swing at it and it comes up with a bunch of garbage and you say no no no the answer. This is a dog I want you to produce dog and all of the other switch all the other. outputs have to be zero And I want to back propagate that and just do it over and over and over again. It's just like Showing a kid. This is an apple. This is a dog. This is a cat and just keep showing it to him until they eventually get it
Okay, in any ways that big invention is deep learning That's the foundation of artificial intelligence a piece of software That learns from examples That's basically we machine learning a machine that learns And so so one of the the big first Applications was image recognition and one of the most important image recognition applications is radiology hmm and so so uh He predicted about five years ago That in five years time the world won't need any radiologists Because AI would have swept the whole field Well turns out AI has swept the whole field that is completely true today Just about every radiologist is using AI in some way and What's ironic though what's it what's interesting is that the number of radiologists has actually grown
And so the question is why that's kind of interesting right this and so the prediction was in fact That 30 million radiologists will be wiped out But as it turns out we need it more and the reason for that Is because the purpose of a radiologist is the diagnosed disease Not the study the image the the image studying is simply a task to In service of diagnosing the disease And so now the fact that you could study the images More quickly and more precisely Without ever making a mistake and never gets tired You could study more images you could study it in 3d form instead of 2d Because you know the AI doesn't care whether a study is images in 3d or 2d you could study it in 4d
And so the now you could study images in a way that Radiologist radiologists can't easily do and you could study a lot more of it And so the number of tests that people are able to do Increases and because they're able to serve more Patients The hospital does better They have more clients more patients as a result they have better economics when they have better economics They hire more radiologists because their purpose is not to study the images Their purpose is to diagnose disease
And so the question is The what I'm leading up to is Ultimately what is the purpose What is the purpose of the lawyer And has the purpose changed What is the purpose you know one of the examples that I gave is um that I would give is For example Like if my car became self-driving Will all show first be out of jobs The answer probably is not Because for some perp for some show first They some people who are driving you they could be protectors some people They're part of the experience part of the service so when you get there they you know They could take care of things for you and so for a lot of different reasons Not all show first would lose their jobs
Some show first would lose their jobs And many show first would change their jobs And the type of Applications of autonomous vehicles will probably increase You know the usage of the technology within find new homes And so I I think you have to go back to what is the purpose of a job You know like for example if AI comes along I actually don't believe I'm gonna lose my job because my purpose Isn't to I have to look at a lot of documents.
I study a lot of emails. I Look at a bunch of diagrams, you know The question is what is the job and and the purpose of somebody probably hasn't changed a lawyer for example Help people that probably hasn't changed studying legal documents generating documents. It's part of the job not the job But don't you think there's many jobs that AI will replace if your job is the task yeah if your job is the task right So automation yeah, if your job.
Yeah, if your job is the task. That's a lot of people It could be a lot of people, but they'll probably generate like for example Uh, let's say we let's say I'm super excited about the the the robots Elon's working on It's still a few years away When it happens when it happens um There's a whole new industry of technicians and People who have to manufacture the robots right? Mm-hmm, and so that that job never existed and so you're gonna have a whole industry of people Taking care of like for example, you know all the mechanics and all the people who are building things for cars super charging cars Uh, that didn't exist before cars and now we're gonna have robots You're gonna have robot apparel so a whole industry of right isn't that right because I want my robot to look different than you robot And so you're gonna you're gonna have a whole you know apparel industry for robots You're gonna have mechanics for robots and you have you know people who comes and maintain.
You don't think so you don't think that they're all done by other robots Eventually and then there'll be something else So you think ultimately people just adapt Except if you are the task which is a large percentage of the workforce if your job is just the chop vegetables Cuisinards gonna replace you. Yeah So people have to find meaning in other things your job has to be more than the task What do you think about Elon's believe that this universal basic income thing will eventually become necessary Many people think that andry Yang that's a quote. He was one of the first people to sort of sound that alarm during the the 2020 election Yeah, I guess um You have both ideas probably won't exist at the same time and and um as in life things will probably be in the middle.
One idea of course is that there'll be so much abundance of resource that nobody needs a job and we'll all be wealthy On the other hand Um, we're gonna need universal basic income both ideas don't exist at the same time right and so we're either gonna be all wealthy Or we're gonna be all using everybody be wealthy though, but well because scenario wealthy Not because you have a lot of dollars wealthy because there's a lot of abundance Like for example today We are wealthy of information You know, this is some a concept several thousand years ago Only a few people have and so Today we have wealth of a whole bunch of things resources that that historic point. Yeah, yeah.
And so we're gonna have wealth of resources things that we think of valuable today That in the future is just not that not that valuable, you know, and so it because it's automated And so I think I think the question Maybe maybe partly it's hard to answer partly because It's hard to talk about infinity and it's hard to talk about a long time from now and the reason for that is because There's just too many scenarios to to consider but I think I think in the next several years call it five to ten years There's several things that I I believe in hope Um, and I say hope because I'm not sure one of the things that I believe is That the technology divide would be substantially collapsed.
And Of course the alternative Viewpoint is that AI is going to increase the technology divine Now the reason why I believe AI is going to reduce the technology divine It is because we have proof The evidence is that AI is the easiest application in the world to use Chatchy PT has grown to almost a billion users Frankly practically overnight And if you're not exactly sure how to use everybody knows how to use chat GPT Just say something to it if you're not sure how to use chat GPT you ask chat GPT how to use it no Tool in history has ever had this capability A quieson art, you know, if you don't know how to use it you're kind of screwed You know walk up to and say how do you use a quieson art you're gonna have to find somebody else.
And so but in AI we'll just tell you exactly how to do it anybody could do this Now speak to you in any language and if it doesn't know your language You'll speak it in that language and I'll probably figure out that it doesn't completely understand your language Go and learns it Instantly and comes back and talk to you And so I think the The technology divide has a real chance finally that you don't have to speak Python or C++ or Fortran you can just speak human and whatever form of human you like And so I think that that has a real chance of closing the technology divine.
Now of course The counter narrative would say that AI is only going to be available for The nations in the countries That have a vast amount of resources because AI takes energy and AI takes A lot of GPUs and factories to be able to produce the AI No doubt at the scale that we would like to do in the United States But the fact that it matters your phone is going to run AI just fine all by itself You know in a few years today it already does it fairly decently. And so the the fact that and every country every nation every Every society will have to benefit a very good AI It might not be tomorrow's AI it might be yesterday's AI but yesterday's AI is freaking amazing You know in 10 years time Nine-year-old AI is going to be amazing.
You don't need a let you know 10-year-old AI You don't need frontier AI like we need frontier AI because we want to be the world leader But for every single country everybody I think the the capability to elevate everybody's knowledge and capability and intelligence That day is coming the octagon isn't just in Las Vegas anymore It's right in your hands with Draft King Sportsbook the official sports betting partner of UFC Get ready because when Dwaushwili and Jan face off again at UFC 323 every punch every takedown every finish it all has the potential to pay off in real time New customers bet just five dollars and if your bet wins you get paid two hundred dollars in bonus bets.
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And also energy production Which is the real bottleneck when it comes to third world countries and that's right electricity and All the all the resources that we take for granted Almost everything is going to be energy constrained and so if you take a look at um One of the most important technology advances in histories this idea called Moore's Law Moore's Law Was the started Basically in my generation and my generation is the generation of computers I Graduated 1984 and that was basically at the very beginning of the PC revolution And the microprocessor and and Every single year in approximately doubled.
And we describe it as every single year we double to performance But what it really means is that every single year the cost of computing passed And so the cost of computing in a course of five years reduced by factor of 10 the amount of energy Necessary to do computing to do any task reduced by a factor of 10 every single 10 years a hundred a thousand ten thousand A hundred thousand so on and so forth and so each one of The clicks of Moore's Law the amount of energy necessary to do any computing reduced That's the reason why you have a laptop today When back in 1984 is set on the desk You got to plug in it wasn't that fast and it consumed a lot of power today You know it is only a few watts and so Moore's Law Is the fundamental technology the fundamental technology trend that made it possible.
Well, what's going on in AI the reason why I'm videos here Is because in a we invented this new way of doing computing we call accelerated computing We started it 33 years ago took us about 30 years to Really made it huge breakthrough And that in that 30 years or so We took computing You know probably a factor of well, let me just say in the last ten years the last ten years We improved the performance of computing by one hundred thousand times Whoa imagine a car over the course of ten years it became a hundred thousand times faster Or at the same speed a hundred thousand times cheaper Or at the same speed a hundred thousand times less energy.
If your car did that it on the energy at all What I mean what what I'm trying to say is that in ten years time The amount of energy necessary for artificial intelligence for most people will be Miniscule Utterly miniscule and so we'll have AI running in all kinds of things and all the time because it doesn't consume that much energy And so if you're a nation that uses AI for you know Almost everything in your social fabric of course you're going to need these AI factories But for a lot of countries, I think you're going to you're going to have excellent AI And you're not going to need as much energy everybody will be able to come. along. It's my point So currently that is a big bottleneck right is energy Yeah, it is the bottleneck the problem.
Yeah, is this so was it Google that is making nuclear power plants to operate one of its AI factories I haven't heard that but I think in the next six seven years, I think you're going to see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors and By small and how big you're talking about hundreds of megawatts. Yeah, okay, and that these will be Local the two whatever specific company they have that's right. We're all be power generators. Whoa You know, just like just like you're You know somebody's farm. It's probably is the smartest way to do it right and it takes the burn off Yeah, it takes the burden off the grid. It takes yeah, and you could build as much as you need And you can contribute back to the grid.
It's a really important point that I think you just made about Moore's law And the relationship to pricing because you know a laptop today like you can get one of those little map MacBook airs They're incredible. They're so strong unbelievably powerful battery life. I have to charge it. Yeah, I like crazy and It's not that expensive that's what I'm speaking like something like that I remember when that's just Moore's law right then there's the Nvidia law Oh, just right the the law I was talking to you about yeah computing that we invented right the reason why we're here Just new this new way of doing computing is like Moore's law on Energy drinks.
I mean, it's It's like Moore's law This like yeah Moore's law and Joe Rogan wow, that's interesting. Yeah, that's us. So explain that This this chip that you brought to Elon. Yeah, what's the significance of this like why is it so superior and so In 2012 Jeff Hinton's lab this gentleman I was talking talking about Ilya Suskabur Alex Khrushchevsky They Made a breakthrough in computer vision in literally creating a Piece of software Called Alex net and It's job was to recognize images and it recognized images At a Cape at a level computer vision, which is fundamental to intelligence if you can't perceive you can't as hard to have intelligence.
And so computer vision is a fundamental pillar of not the only but fundamental pillar of and so breaking Computer vision were breaking through in computer vision is pretty foundational to almost everything that everybody wants to do in AI and so in 2012 Their lab in Toronto I made this made this breakthrough called Alex net and Alex net was able to recognize images So much better than any human created computer vision algorithm in the 30 years prior So all of these people all these scientists and we had many two working on computer vision algorithms and these two kids Ilya and Alex under the under under Jeff Hinton took a giant leap above it and it was Based on this thing called Alex net this neural network and the way it ran.
The way they made it work was literally buying two Nvidia graphics cards Because Nvidia's Nvidia's GPUs we've been working on this new way of doing computing and our GPUs application And it's basically a super computing application to back in in order to process computer games and what you have in your racing simulator That is called an image generator super computer And so Nvidia started our first application was computer graphics.
And we applied this new way of doing computing where we do things in parallel and instead of sequentially A CPU does things sequentially Step one step two step three in our case we break the problem down and we give it to thousands of processors And so our way of doing computation Is much more complicated But if you're able to formulate the problem in the way that we Created called kuda. This is the invention of our company If you could formulate it in that way we could process everything simultaneously.
Now in the case of computer graphics it's easier to do because every single pixel on your screen is not related to every other pixel and so I could render multiple parts of the screen at the same time. Not not completely true because you know maybe maybe the way lighting works or the way shadow works. There's a lot of dependency and such but computer graphics with all the this with all the pixels. I should be a bit process everything simultaneously and so we took this embarrassingly parallel problem called computer graphics and we applied it to this new way of doing computing and videos and videos accelerated computing. We put it in all of our graphics cards. Kids were buying it to play games where you probably don't know this but were the largest gaming platform in the world today.
Oh, I know that. Oh, okay I used to make my own computers. I used to buy your graphics cards. Oh, that's super cool. Yeah set up S.L.I. with two graphics cards. Yeah, that's super cool. Oh, yeah, man. I used to be a quick junkie. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, okay, so S.L.I. I'll tell you the story in just a second and how it led to Elon I'm gonna still answering the question. And so anyways these two kids trained this model using the technique I described earlier on our GPUs because our GPUs could process things in parallel.
It is essentially a supercomputer in a PC the reason why you used it for quake is because it is the first consumer supercomputer. Okay, and so anyways they made that breakthrough. We were working on computer vision at the time it caught my attention. And so we went to learn about it simultaneously this deep learning phenomenon was happening all over all over the country. Universities after another recognized the importance of deep learning and all of this work was happening at Stanford at Harvard at Berkeley just all over the place New York University, Lanka, you know, Yanle Kun, Andrew Yang at Stanford so many different places and I see a cropping up everywhere.
And so my curiosity asked you know, what is so special about this form of machine learning and we've known about machine learning for a very long time. We've known about AI for a very long time. We've known about neural networks for a very long time. What makes now the moment and so we realized that this architecture for deep neural networks back propagation the way deep neural networks were created we could probably scale this problem scale the solution to solve many problems that is essentially a universal function approximator.
Okay, meaning meaning you know back when you're in school you have a you have a you have a box inside of it is a function you give it an input it gives you an output and the the reason why I call it an universal function approximator is that this computer instead of you describing the function a function could be a new in sequasion f equals m a that's a function. You write the function in software you give it input f a mass acceleration. It'll tell you to force okay and the way this computer works is really interesting.
You give it a universal function it's not f equals m a just the universal function. It's a big huge deep neural network and instead of describing the inside you give it examples of input and output and it figures out the inside. So you give it input and output and it figures out the inside a universal function approximator today it could be new in sequasion tomorrow. It could be Maxwell's equation it could be Ku-Lom's law could be thermal dynamics equation. It could be you know Schrodinger's equation for quantum physics and so you could put any you could have this describe almost anything so long as you have the input and the output.
So long as you have the input in the output or it could learn the input and output and so we took a step back and we said hang on second this isn't just for computer vision deep learning could solve any problem. All the problems that are interesting so long as we have input and output. Now what has input and output? Well work the world the world has input and output and so we could have a computer that could learn almost anything machine learning artificial intelligence.
And so we reasoned that maybe this is the fundamental breakthrough that we needed there were a couple of things that had to be solved. For example, we had to believe that you could actually scale this up to giant systems it was running in a they had two graphics cards two GTX 580s which by the way is exactly your S.I. configuration. Yeah, okay so that GTX 580 S.I. was the revolutionary computer that put deep learning on the map. Wow it was 2018 and you were using it to play quick.
Wow, that's crazy. That was the moment. That was the big bang of modern AI. We were lucky because we were inventing this technology, this computing approach. We were lucky that they found it. Turns out they were gamers, and it was lucky they found it and it was lucky that we paid attention to that moment. It was a little bit like, you know that Star Trek, you know, first contact. The Vulcans had to have seen the warp drive at that very moment. If they didn't witness the warp drive, you know, they would have never come to earth and everything would have never happened.
It's a little bit like if I hadn't paid attention to that moment, that flash, and that flash didn't last long. If I hadn't paid attention to that flash or our company didn't pay attention to it, who knows what would happen? But we saw that and we reasoned our way into this is a universal function approximator. This is not just a computer vision approximator; we could use this for all kinds of things if we could solve two problems. The first problem is that we have to prove to ourselves it could scale. The second problem we had to wait for, I guess contribute to and wait for, is the world will never have enough data on input and output where we could supervise the AI to learn everything.
For example, if we have to supervise our children on everything they learn, the amount of information they could learn is limited. We needed the AI, we needed the computer to have a method of learning without supervision. And that's where we had to wait a few more years, but unsupervised AI learning is now here and so the AI could learn by itself. And the reason why the AI could learn by itself is because we have many examples of right answers. Like for example, if I want to teach an AI how to predict the next word, I could just grab a whole bunch of texts we already have, mask out the last word, and make it try and try and try again until it predicts the next one.
Or I mask out random words inside the text and I make it try and try and try and predicts it. You know, like "Mary Mary goes down to the bank," is that a river bank or a money bank? Well, if you're going to go down to the bank, it's probably a river bank. Okay, so and it might not be obvious even from that— it might need an "uh," and "uh," and "caught a fish." Okay, now you know it must be the river bank. And so you give these AIs a whole bunch of these examples, and you mask out the words; it'll predict the next one.
我会在文本中随机遮住一些单词,然后让它一次又一次地尝试预测。比如说,"Mary Mary goes down to the bank"——这里的“bank”是指河岸还是银行呢?如果你要去银行,可能是指河岸。不过,仅从这句话可能还不明显,你还需要听到诸如“呃,呃,捉到一条鱼”这样的线索。这样你就知道这一定是指河岸了。于是,你给这些人工智能大量这样的例子,并遮住一些单词,它就会试着预测下一个词。
Okay, and so unsupervised learning came along. These two ideas, that fact that it's scalable and unsupervised learning came along, we were convinced that we had to put everything into this and help create this industry because we're going to solve a whole bunch of interesting problems. And that was in 2012. By 2016, I had built this computer called the DGX-1, the one that you saw me give to Elon is called DGX Spark. The DGX-1 was $300,000. It cost NVIDIA a few billion dollars to make the first one. Instead of two chips, SSL I, we connected eight chips with a technology called NVLink, but it's basically SSL supercharged.
Okay, and so we connected eight of these chips together instead of just two and all of them work together just like your Quake rig did to solve this deep learning problem to train this model. And so I created, we created this thing. I announced it at GTC and at one of our annual events, and I described this deep learning thing, computer vision thing, and this computer called DGX-1. The audience was like completely silent. They had no idea what I was talking about. And I was lucky because I had known Elon and I helped him build the first computer for Model 3, the Model S.
And when he wanted to start working on autonomous vehicles, I helped him build the computer that went into the Model S AV system, his full self-driving system. We were basically the FSD computer version one. And so we were already working together and when I announced this thing, no one in the world wanted it. I had no purchase orders, not one, nobody wanted to buy it, nobody wanted to be part of it. Except for Elon; he goes, he was at the event and we were doing a fireside chat about the future of self-driving cars. Well, I think it's like 2016— yeah, maybe at that time was 2015 and he goes, "You know what? I have a company that could really use this." I was like, wow, my first customer.
And so I was pretty excited about it and he goes, "Yeah, we have this company. It's a non-profit company." And all the blood drained out of my face. Yeah, I just spent a few billion dollars building this thing. It costs three hundred thousand dollars and, you know, the chances of a non-profit being able to pay for this thing is where ox meets zero. And he goes, "You know, this is a— it's an AI company and it's a non-profit and we could really use one of these supercomputers."
And so I picked it up. I built the first one for ourselves; we're using it inside the company. I boxed one up. I drove it up to San Francisco and... I delivered it to Elon in 2016 a bunch of researchers where they were there Peter Beale was there Ilya was scared there was a bunch of people there and uh I Walked up to the second floor where they were all kind of in a room this smaller than your place here and and That place turned out to have been opening. I 2016 just a bunch of people sitting in a room It's not really a non-profit anymore. They're not they're not nonprofit anymore. Yeah, where it how that works Yeah, yeah, but anyhow Anyhow Elon was there. Yeah, it was it was really a great great moment. Oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's it Look at you bro same jacket Look at that I haven't aged Not not a lick of black hair though Size of it is Significantly small that was the other day.
Okay, so oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, look at the difference exactly the same industrial design He's holding it in his hand Here here's the amazing thing djx1 was one petaflops. Okay, that's a lot of flops and djx spark is one petaflops nine years later Wow the same the same amount of computing horsepower and a much more shrunken down Yeah, and instead of $300,000 it's now $4,000 and it's the size of a small book Incredible crazy Yeah, I'll technology moves anyways. That's the reason why I wanted to get give him the first one Because I gave him the first one 2016. It's so fascinating I mean you if you wanted to make a story for a film I mean that would be the story that like what What better scenario if if it really does become a digital life form How funny would it be that it is birthed out of the desire for Computer graphics for video games Exactly.
It's kind of crazy. Yeah kind of crazy when you think about it that way because It's just perfect origin story computer graphics Was one of the hardest computer super computer problems Generating reality and also one of the most profitable to solve because computer games are so popular When Nvidia started in 1993 We were trying to create this new computing approach the question is what's the killer app and The the problem we wanted to the the company wanted to Create a new type of computing problem computing architecture a computing a new type of computer That can solve problems that normal computers can't solve well The applications that existed in the industry in 1993 Are applications that normal computers can solve because if the normal computers can't solve them why would the application exist?
And so we had a mission statement For a company that has no chance of success But I didn't know that in 1993 it just sounded like a good idea right And so if we created this thing that can solve problems you know, it's like You actually have to go create the problem And so that's what we did In 1993 there was no quake John Carmack hadn't been reduced to release doom yet You probably remember that sure yeah and and there were no applications for it And so I went to Japan because the arcade industry Had this at the time of Sega even remember sure the arcade machines They came out with 3D arcade systems virtual fighter Daytona virtual cop All of those arcade games were in 3d for the very very first time and the technology they were using Was from Martin Marietta the flight simulators they took the guts out of a flight simulator and I put it into an arcade machine The system that you have over here It's got to be a million times more powerful than that arcade machine and that was a flight simulator for NASA
Whoa And so they took the guts out of that They were they were using it for flight simulation of jets and you know Space shuttle and and they took the guts out of that And Sega Had this brilliant computer developer his name is Yusuzuki Yusuzuki and Miyamoto Sega and Nintendo these were the You know the incredible Pioneers the visionaries the incredible artists and they're both very very technical They were the origins really of the gaming industry and Yusuzuki Pioneer 3D graphics gaming and So I went we created this company and there were no apps and we were Spending all of our afternoons you know we told our family were going to work But it was just the three of us, you know who's gonna know and so we went to Curtis's might one of us one of the founders Went to Curtis's townhouse and Chris and I were married we have kids Already had Spencer and Madison. They were probably two years old and And Chris's kids are about the same age as ours
And we would go to work in this townhouse, but you know when you're a startup and the mission statement is the way we described. You're not gonna have too many customers calling you and so we had really nothing to do. And so after lunch we would always have a great lunch. After lunch we would go to the arcades and play the Sega vert you know the Sega virtue fighter and Daytona and all those games and analyze how they're doing it trying to figure out how they were doing that. And so we decided um let's just go to Japan and let's convince Sega to move those applications into the PC and we would start the PC gaming the 3D gaming industry partnering with Sega that's how Nvidia started wow.
And so in exchange for them part developing their games for our computers in the PC, we would build a chip for their game console. That was the partnership I build a chip for your game console you port the Sega games to us and um and then they paid us a you know at the time a quite a significant amount of money to build that game console. And that was kind of the beginning of Nvidia getting started and we thought we were on our way. And so I started with a business plan the mission statement that was impossible. We lucked into the Sega partnership. We started taking off started building our game console and about a couple years into it.
But we discovered our first technology didn't work. It would have been a flaw, it was a flaw in all of the technology ideas that we had. The architecture concepts were sound, but the way we were doing computer graphics was exactly backwards. You know instead of I won't bore you with the technology, but instead of inverse texture mapping we were doing forward texture mapping. Instead of triangles, we did curved surfaces. So other people did it flat we did it round um. Other technology, the technology that ultimately won, the technology we used today has Z buffers, it automatically sorted. We had an architecture with no Z buffers; the application had to sort it.
So we chose a bunch of technology approaches that three major technology choices, all three choices were wrong. Okay, so this is how incredibly smart we were. And so in 1995, early mid-95, we realized we're going down the wrong path. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley was packed with 3D graphics startups because it was the most exciting technology at that time. And so 3D effects and rendition and Silicon graphics were coming in Intel was already in there and you know gosh what added up eventually to a hundred different startups we had to compete against. Everybody had chosen the right technology approach and we chose the wrong one.
And so we were the first company to start we found ourselves essentially dead last with the wrong answer. And so the company was in trouble and ultimately we have to make several decisions. The first decision is well if we change now we will be the last company. And even if we changed into the technology that we believe to be right, we'd still be dead. And so that argument you know do we change and therefore be dead? Don't change and make this technology work somehow? Or go do something completely different? That question stirred the company strategically and was a hard question.
I eventually you know advocated for it. We don't know what the right strategy is, but we know what the wrong technology is. So let's stop doing it the wrong way and let's give ourselves a chance to go figure out what the strategy is. The second thing, the second problem we had was our company was running on money and I had I was in a contract with Sega and I owed them this game console. And if that contract would have been cancelled we'd be dead. We would have vaporized instantly.
Whoo! And so uh I went to Japan and I explained to the CEO of Sega, Erie Majuri, really great man. He was the former CEO of Honda USA, went back to Sega to run Sega, went back to Japan run Sega. And I explained to him that and I was uh I guess that was what 30, 33 years old. You know when I was 33 years old I still have acne and I get this you know Chinese kid I was super skinny and he was already kind of elder. And I went to him and I said I said listen I've got some bad news for you and and first the technology that we promised you doesn't work.
哇!于是我去了日本,我向世嘉的CEO Erie Majuri 解释了一些事情,他是个很棒的人。 他曾是本田美国的前任CEO,然后回到世嘉领导公司,再回到日本领导世嘉。我向他解释说,当时我大概是30或33岁吧。你知道,我那时候33岁的时候还在长痘,看起来就像个很瘦的中国小孩,而他已经算是年长的了。我去找他,说:“听着,我有个坏消息要告诉你,首先是我们承诺给你的技术并没有成功。”
And second we shouldn't finish your contract because we'd waste all your money and you would have something that doesn't work. And I recommend you find another partner to build your game console. Whoa! And so I'm terribly sorry that we've set you back in your product roadmap. And third even though you're going to I'm asking you to let me out of the contract I still need the money. Because if you didn't give me the money we'd vaporize overnight. And so I explained it to humbly, honestly, I gave him the background, explained to him why the technology doesn't work, why we thought it was going to work, why it doesn't work.
And I asked him to convert the last five million dollars that they were going to complete the contract to give us that money as an investment Instead. And he said But it's very likely your company will go out of business Even with my investment. And it was completely true Back then 1995 $5 million was a lot of money It's a lot of money today $5 million was a lot of money. And here's a pile of competitors doing it right What are the chances that giving him video $5 million That we would develop the right strategy That he would get a return on that $5 million or even get it back 0% Whew You do the math is 0% If If I were sitting there right there I wouldn't have done it $5 million was a amount of money to say at the time.
And so I told him that That um I If you invest it that $5 million in us It is most likely to be lost. But if you didn't invest that money We'd be out of business and we wouldn't have no chance. And I I told him that I I don't even know exactly what I said in the end but I Told him that I would understand If he decided not to But it would make the world to me if he didn't. He went off and thought about it for a couple of days and came back and said we'll do it Wow Erie Modjury To how to correct what it was doing wrong Oh wait, oh man wait until I tell you the rest of it's It's scary even scarier.
Oh no And so so um So what he what he decided was was uh Jensen was a young man he liked That's it wow to this day That's nuts Boy you know but the world owes that guy No doubt right What he he he saw he saw upgraded today in Japan And if he would have kept that five The the investment I think it'd be worth probably about a trillion dollars today I know but the moment we went public they sold it they goes wow that's a miracle And so They sold it yeah they sold it at Nvidia valuation about 300 million That's our IPO valuation 300 million.
And so so anyhow I was incredibly grateful um And then now we have to figure out what to do Because we still were doing the wrong strategy wrong technology. So unfortunately we had to lay off most of the company we shrunk the company all back All the people working on the game console, you know, we had to shrunk it all but shrink it all back and um And then and then somebody told me that but Jensen We've never built it this way before we've never built it the right way before We've only know how to build it the wrong way.
And So nobody in the company knew how to build this Super computing image generator 3D graphics thing that silicon graphics did. And so so uh, I said okay Ha hard can it be You got all these 30 companies you know 50 companies doing it how hard can it be. And so luckily There was a textbook written by the company silicon graphics And so I went down to the store I had 200 bucks in my pocket and I bought three textbooks only three they had 60 dollars a piece I bought the three textbooks I brought it back and I gave one to each one of the architects and I said read that and let's go save the company.
And so So they they read this textbook Learn from the giant at the time silicon graphics About how to do 3D graphics. But the thing that was amazing and what makes him video special today is that The people that are there are able to start from first principles Learn best known art But re-implemented in a way that's never been done before. And so When we re-imagined The technology of 3D graphics we re-imagined it in a way That manifests today The modern 3D graphics we really invented modern 3D graphics But we learned from Previous known arts and we implemented fundamentally differently.
What did you do to change it? Well, you know, the ultimately Ultimately the um The simple the simple answer is that the way silicon graphics works The geometry engine is a bunch of software running on processors. We took that and Eliminated all the generality The general purposeness of it and we reduced it down into the most essential part of 3D graphics And we hard coded it into the chip. And so instead of something general purpose we hard coded it very specifically into Just the limited applications Limited functionality necessary for video games And that Capability that superch and and because we reinvented a whole bunch of stuff It's super charged the capability that one little chip And our one little chip was generating images us fast as a $1 million image generator that was the big breakthrough we took a million dollar thing And we put it into the graphics card that you now put into your gaming PC And that was our big invention.
And then and of course the question is um How do you compete against these 30 other companies doing what they were doing And And there we did we did several things one I Instead of building a 3D graphics Chip for every 3D graphics application We decided to build a 3D graphics chip for one application we bet the farm on video games The needs of video games are very different than needs for CAD Needs for flight simulators. They're related but not the same And so we narrowly focused our problem statement so I could reject all of the other complexities And we shrunk it down into this one little focus and then we supercharged the three gamers.
然后,当然问题就来了,我们如何在与其他 30 家做相同事情的公司竞争?对此,我们采取了几个措施。首先,我们没有为每个 3D 图形应用构建一款 3D 图形芯片,而是决定为一个应用构建,我们把所有的赌注都押在视频游戏上。视频游戏的需求和 CAD(计算机辅助设计)以及飞行模拟器的需求非常不同,虽然它们有所关联,但并不相同。所以我们把问题聚焦得非常窄,这样我就可以排除所有其他复杂因素,把它缩小到一个小的重点上,然后大力提升三名游戏玩家的体验。
And the second thing that we did Was we created a whole ecosystem of Working with game developers and getting their their games ported and adapted to our silicon So that we could get Turn essentially What is a technology business Into a platform business into a game platform business. So we you know g forces really Today, it's also the most advanced 3D graphics technology in the world But a long time ago g forces really the game console inside your PC It's you know it runs windows it runs accelerants powerpoint of course those are easy things But it's fundamental purpose Was simply to turn your PC into a game console. So we we were the first technology company To build all of this incredible technology in service of one audience gamers.
Now of course in 1993 The gaming industry didn't exist But by the time that John Carmack came along and the Doom phenomenon happened and then Quake came out as you know That entire all that entire community boom took off. Do you know where the name doom came from? It came from this There's a scene in the movie the color of money Where Tom Cruise who's this elite pool player shows up at this pool hall and this local hustler says What he got in the case and he opens up this case. He has a special pool queue. He goes in here And he opens it up he goes doom That's where it came from. Yeah, cuz Carmack said that's what they wanted to do to the gaming industry Doom that when doom came out it would just be everybody be like oh we're fucked. Oh wow That's awesome and then amazing because it's the perfect name for the game.
Yeah Yeah, the name came out of that scene in that movie. That's right Well, and then of course Tim Swini and Epic games and And the 3d gaming genre took off. Yes, and so if you just kind of in the beginning was no gaming industry We had no choice but to focus the company on one thing That one thing So really incredible origin story. Oh, it's it's amazing like you must like look back at disaster is what Million dollar that pivot with that conversation with that gentleman if he did not agree to that if he did not like you What would the world look like today that's crazy.
Oh wait then then our entire life hung on another gentleman And so so now Here we are we built so before GeForce was riva 128 Riva 128 saved the company it revolutionized computer graphics The performance cost performance ratio of 3d graphics for gaming was off the charts amazing and We're getting ready to to ship it get what we're building it But we're uh, so as you know 5 million dollars doesn't last long And so every single month every single month uh, we were drawing down You have to build it prototype it you have to design it prototype it Get the silicon back Which costs a lot of money Test it with software Because without the software testing the chip you don't know the chip works And Then you're going to find a bug probably Because every time you test something you find bugs Which means you have to tape it out again Which is more time more money.
And so we did the math there was no chance in video was going to survive it We didn't have that much time to tape out a chip Send it to a foundry TSMC Get the silicon back test it send it back out again. There was no no shot no hope And so The math the spreadsheet doesn't allow us to do that and so I heard about this company and this company built this machine And this machine is an emulator. You could take your design All of the software that describes the chip And you could put it into this machine and this machine will pretend It's our chip So I don't have to send it to the fab Wait until the fab sends it back test I could have this machine pretend it's our chip And I could put all of the software on top of this machine called an emulator And test all of the software on this pretend chip And I could fix it all Before I send it to the fab And if and if I could do that When I send it to the fab it should work Nobody knows but it should work.
And so we came to the conclusion That let's take half of the money we had left in the bank At the time it was about a million dollars Take half of that money and go buy this machine So instead of keeping the money to stay alive I took half of the money to go buy this machine while I call the sky up This kind the company's called icos I called this company up and I said hey listen I heard about this machine I like to buy one And they go oh That's terrific but we're out of business I said what you're out of business He goes yeah we have no customers And I said wait hang on so you never made the machine They guess it no no we made the machine We have one in inventory if you want but we're out of business So I bought one out of inventory Okay After I bought it they went out of business wow.
I bought it out of inventory And on this machine We put Nvidia's chip into it And we tested all of the software on top And at this point we were on fumes But we convinced ourselves that chip is going to be great And so I had to call some other gentleman So I called TSMC And I told TSMC That listen TSMC is the world's largest founder today At the time There was just a few hundred million dollars large Tiny low company And I explained to them what we were doing And um I explained them I told them I had a lot of customers I had one you know diamond multimedia Probably one of the companies you bought the graphics card from back in the old days And I I said you know we have a lot of customers and demands really great And We're going to tape out a chip to you And I like to go directly to production Because I know it works.
And And they said nobody has ever done that before Nobody has ever taped out a chip that worked the first time And nobody starts out production without looking at it But I knew that if I didn't start to production I'd be out of business anyways And if I could start to production I might have a chance And so TSMC decided to support me And uh this gentleman is named Morse Chang Morse Chang is the father of the foundry industry The founder of TSMC really great man He decided to support our company I explained to them everything He decided to support us Frankly probably because They didn't have that many other customers anyhow But they were grateful And I was immensely grateful.
And as we were starting the production Morse flew to United States and uh He didn't so many words Asked me so but he asked me a whole lot of questions that was trying to tease out Do I have any money But he didn't directly ask me that You know and so the truth is that We didn't have all the money But we had a strong PO from the customer And If it didn't work Some way first would have been lost and um You know, I I'm not exactly sure what would have happened But we were to come short It would have been it would have been rough But they supported us With all of that risk involved We launched this chip Turns out to have Been completely revolutionary Knocked the ball out of the park We became the fastest Growing technology company in history To go from zero to one billion dollars.
So wild that you didn't test the chip I know well I didn't test it afterwards Yeah, we tested that afterwards What in the production? But by the way by the way That methodology that we developed to save the company Is used throughout the world today That's amazing Yeah, we changed we changed the whole world's methodology of designing chips The whole world's rhythm of designing chips We changed everything How well did you sleep those days It must have been so much stress You know what um What is that feeling where where uh The world Just kind of feels like it's flying It you have this What do you call that feeling? You can't you can't stop the feeling that everything's moving super fast And you know and you're laying in your Laying in bed and the world just feels like you know And you you feel deeply anxious Completely out of control I've felt that probably a couple of times in my life It's during that time Wow, yeah, it was incredible.
What an incredible success But I learned I learned a lot I learned I learned about I learned several things I learned I learned how to develop strategies Um, I learned how to Uh, uh, and when I want to you know our company learned how to develop strategies What are winning strategies? We learned how to create a market we created the modern 3D gaming market We learned how and and so that exact same skill is how we created the modern AI market Is exactly the same Yeah, it's exactly the same skill exactly the same blueprint And We learned how to uh deal with crisis How to stay calm How to think through things systematically We learned how to Remove all waste in the company and work from first principles and doing only the things that are essential Everything else is waste because we have no money for it To live on fumes at all times and the feeling No different than the feeling I had this morning when I woke up that You're going to be out of business and that you're you know the phrase 30 days from going out of business. I've used For 33 years because you still feel oh yeah.
Oh yeah every morning every morning But but you guys are one of the biggest companies on planet earth But the feeling doesn't change wow the sense of vulnerability the sense of uncertainty the sense of insecurity It doesn't leave you that's crazy. We were you know we had nothing We had nothing we were dealing with giant. Oh yeah. Oh yeah every day Every moment. Do you think that fuels you? Is that part of the reason why the company so successful that you have that Hungry mentality That you never rest you're never sitting on your laurels you're always on the edge I have a greater drive from not wanting To fail Then the drive of wanting to succeed Is that like I think I coaches to tell you that's Joe the world has just heard me say that for out loud for first time But but it's true.
Well, this how fast fear of failure drives me more than the The greed or whatever it is ultimately that's probably a more healthy approach Nothing I'm thinking about it Because like the fear not ambitious for example, you know, I just want to stay alive Joe I want the company to thrive, you know, I want us to make an impact. That's interesting. Yeah. Well, maybe that's why you're so humble So maybe that's what keeps you grounded, you know, because with the kind of spectacular success the companies achieved do it be easy to get a big head No, right, but isn't that interesting? It's like though If you were the guy that your main focus is just success You probably would go well made it nailed it in the man It's dead you wake up you're like, I can't fuck this up. No exact every morning Every morning, not every moment Yeah, that's good. Before I go to bed.
Well, listen if I was a major investor in your company That's why I'd want running it. I want a guy who's like, that's why I work I have yeah That's what I work. That's why I work seven days a week every moment. I'm awake You work every moment every moment. I'm awake. Wow. I'm thinking about solving a problem. I'm thinking about How can you keep this up? I don't know, but Could be next week It is exhausted sounds completely exhausting always in a state of anxiety Wow, yeah, always in a state of anxiety. Well kudos to you for admitting that I think that's important for a lot of people to hear because you know There's probably some young people out there That are in a similar position To where you were when you were starting out that just feel like All those people that have made it they're just smarter than me and they had more opportunities than me And it's just like it was handed to them or they're just in the right place the right time and it's joe I just described to you somebody who didn't know what was going on Actually did it wrong.
Yeah, yeah, and the ultimate diving catch like two or three times crazy Yeah, the ultimate diving catch is the perfect way to put it You know, it's just like the edge of your glove It probably bounced off of somebody's helmet and land it God, that's incredible. It's incredible, but it's also it's really cool that you have this perspective that you look at it that way Because you know a lot of people that have delusions for grandeur or they have you know And they're inflated and they're rewriting of history Oftentimes had them somehow Extra learn Extra narrowly smart and they were geniuses and they knew all along and they were they were spot on the business plan was exactly what they thought They destroyed the competition and you know and they emerged victorious Meanwhile you're like I'm scared every day It's so funny.
Oh my god, that's amazing. It's so true though. It's amazing. It's so true. It's amazing Well, but I I think there's nothing inconsistent With being a leader and being vulnerable You know, I The company doesn't need me to be a genius Right all along right all the time Absolutely certain about what I'm trying to do and what I'm doing the the company doesn't need that The company wants me to succeed You know the thing that and what we started out today Talking about President Trump and I was about to say something and Listen he is my president. He is our president We should all and we're talking about just because it's president Trump. We all want him to be wrong I think the United States we all have to realize he is our president We want him to succeed because no matter who's president that's right.
Yeah, that's right We want him to succeed. We need to help him succeed because it helps everybody all of us succeed and I'm lucky that I work in a company where I've 40,000 people who wants me to succeed They want me to succeed and I can tell and they're all every single day to help me overcome these challenges trying to realize Realize what I described to be our strategy doing their best and if it's somehow wrong or not perfectly right To tell me so that we could pivot And the more vulnerable we are as a leader the more able other people are able to tell you You know that chance and that's not exactly right or right right have you considered this information or and the more vulnerable we are The more able we're actually able to pivot if we put ourselves into this superhuman capability Then it's hard for us to pivot strategy Because we were supposed to be right all along.
And so if you're always right how can you possibly pivot because pivoting requires you to be wrong And so I've got no trouble with being wrong I just have to make sure that I stay alert That I reason about things from first principles all the time Always break things down to first principles understand why it's happening reassess continuously The reassessing continuously is kind of partly what causes continuous anxiety You know because you're asking yourself were you wrong yesterday? Are you still right? Is this the same? Has that changed? Has that condition? Is that worse than you thought?
Because that mindset is perfect for your business though. Because this business is ever changing all the time and there's competition coming from every direction. So much of it is kind of up in the air. And you have to invent a future where 100 variables are included. And there's no way you could be right on all of them. And so you have to be you have to surf. Wow that's a good way to put it. You have to surf. Yeah, you're surfing waves of technology and innovation. That's right. You can't predict the waves. You got to deal with it once you have. Wow. And but skill matters. And oh, I've been doing this for 30. I'm the longest running tech CEO in the world. Is that true? Congratulations. That's amazing.
And you know people ask me how is one don't get fired. They'll stop assured the heartbeat. And then two don't get bored. Yeah, well how do you maintain your enthusiasm? The honor of truth is it's not always enthusiasm. Sometimes it's enthusiasm. Sometimes it's just good old fashioned fear. And then sometimes, you know, a healthy dose of frustration. You know, it's whatever keeps you moving. Yeah, just all the emotions. I think you know CEOs we have all the emotions right, you know? And so probably I'm jacked up to the maximum because you're you're kind of feeling it on behalf of the whole company. I'm feeling it on behalf of everybody at the same time. And it kind of, you know, encapsulates into somebody.
And so I have to be mindful of the past. I have to be mindful of the present. I've got to be mindful of the future. And um, you know it can't, it's not without emotion. It's not just, it's not just a job. Let's just put it that way. Hmm it doesn't seem like it at all. I would imagine one of the more difficult aspects of your job currently now that the company is massively successful is anticipating where technology is headed and where the applications are going to be. Yeah so how do you try to map that out? Yeah they're um, there's a whole bunch of ways. And and it takes, it takes um, takes a whole bunch of things but let me just start.
Uh, you have to be surrounded by amazing people. And Nvidia is now, you know, if you look at look at um, the large tech companies in the world today most of them have a business in advertising or social media or you know content distribution. And at the core of it is really fundamental computer science. And so the company's business is not computers. The company's business is not technology. Technology drives the company. Nvidia is the only company in the world that's large who's only businesses technology. We only build technology we don't advertise. The only way that we make money is to create amazing technology and sell it.
And so to beat that, to be Nvidia today you're the number one things you're surrounded by the finest computer scientists in the world. And that's my gift. My gift is that we've created a company culture, a condition by which the world's greatest computer scientists want to be part of it. Because they get to do their life's work and create the next thing. Because that's what they want to do. Because maybe they're not, they don't want to be in service of another business. They want to be in service of the technology itself. And we're the largest form of its kind in history of the world. Wow, I know, it's pretty amazing.
Wow. And so so one, you know we have a great condition, we have a great culture, we have great people. And now, now, now the question is how do you systematically um, be able to see the future, stay alert of it, and reduce the likelihood of messing something or being wrong? And so there's a lot of different ways you could do that. For example, we have great partnerships. We have fundamental research. We have a great research lab, one of the largest industrial research labs in the world today. And we partner with a whole bunch of universities and other scientists. We do a lot of open collaboration. And so I'm constantly working with researchers outside the company.
We have the benefit of having amazing customers. And so I've the benefit of working with Elon and you know and others in the industry. And we have the benefit of being the only pure technology company that can serve consumer internet, industrial manufacturing, scientific computing, healthcare, financial services, all the industries that we're in. They're all signals to me and so they all have mathematicians and scientists. And so because I I have the benefit now of a radar system that is the most broad of any company in the world working across every single industry from agriculture to energy to video games. And so the ability for us to have this vantage point, one doing fundamental research ourselves and then two working with all the great researchers, working with all the great industries, the feedback systems incredible.
And then finally, usually I have to have a culture of staying super alert. There's no easy way of being alert except for paying attention. I haven't found a single way of being able to stay alert without paying attention. And so you know, I probably read several thousand emails a day. How do you have the time for that? Now wake up early this morning. I was up at four o'clock. How much do you sleep? Uh, six seven seven hours. Yeah. And then you're up at four reading emails for a few hours. Yeah, where you could go on that's right. Yeah, wow. Every day every single day not one day missed, including Thanksgiving Christmas. Do you ever take a vacation? Uh, yeah, but they're um my definition of a vacation is when I'm with my family and so if I'm with my family, I'm very happy I don't care where we are. And you don't work then or you were in a little? No, no, I work a lot. Even if you like if you go on a trip somewhere. Oh, she's still working. Oh, sure. Oh sure.
Wow every day, every day. Well, my kids work every day. You make me tired just saying this. My kids work every day. Both of my kids work in a video they work every day. Wow. Yeah, I'm very lucky. Wow, yeah, it's brutal now because you know, it's just me working every day. Now we have three people working every day and they want to work with me every day and so it's it's a lot of work. Well, you've obviously imparted that ethic into them. They work incredibly hard. I mean, it's not believable. But my parents worked incredibly hard. Yeah, I was I was born with the work gene. The suffering gene. Well, listen man, it has paid off what a crazy story. I mean, it's just it's really an amazing origin story.
It really, I mean, it has to be kind of surreal to be in the position that you're in now when you look back at how many times that it could have fallen apart and humble beginnings. But Joe, this is great. It's a great country. And I'm an immigrant. My parents sent my older brother and I here first. We're in Thailand. I was born in Taiwan, but my dad had a job in Thailand. He was a chemical and instrumentation engineer, incredible engineer. And his job was to go start an oil refinery and so we moved to Thailand, lived in Bangkok and um in 19 I guess 1973, 1974 time frame. You know how Thailand every so often they would just have a coup? You know the military would have an uprising. And all of a sudden one day there were tanks and soldiers in the streets and my parents thought, you know probably isn't safe for the kids to be here.
And so they contacted my uncle. My uncle lives in Tacoma, Washington and um we had never met him and my parents sent us to him. How old were you? Uh, I was about to turn nine and my older brother almost turned 11 and so the two of us came to United States and we stayed with our uncle for a little bit while he looked for a school for us. And my parents didn't have very much money and they never had been to United States. My father was I'll tell you that story in a second and um and so my uncle found a school that would accept foreign students and affordable enough for my parents. And that school turned out to have been in O'Neighda, Kentucky.
Clark County, Kentucky the epicenter of the opio crisis today. Clark County, Kentucky is was the poorest county in America when I showed up. It is the poorest county in America today. And so we went to the school. It's a great school um O'Neighda Baptist Institute in a town of a few hundred. I think was 600 at the time that we showed up, no traffic light and um I think it was 600. Today, it's kind of amazing feat actually. The ability to hold your population for what it 600 people is quite a magical thing however they did it. And so uh the school had a mission of being an open school for any children who'd like to come.
And what that basically means is that if you're a trouble student, if you have a trouble family, um if you're you know, whatever your background you're welcome to come to O'Neighda Baptist Institute including kids from international who would like to stay there. Did you speak English at the time? Uh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so we showed up and uh my first my first thought was gosh there are a lot of cigarette butts on the ground. 100% of the kid smoked. So right away you know this is not a normal school. Nine year olds? No, I was the youngest kid. Okay. 11 year olds. My roommate was 17 years old.
Wow, yeah, you just turned 17 and he was jacked and um I don't know where he is now. I know his name, but I don't know where he is now. But anyways uh that night we got and and the second thing I noticed when you walk into the into your dorm room is uh there are no drawers and no closet doors. Just like a prison and there's no locks so that people could check check up on you. And so I go into my room and he's 17 and uh, uh, you know get ready for for bed any of the oldest tape all over his body and uh turned out he was in a knife fight and he's been stabbed all over his body and these were just fresh ones. And the other kids were hurt much worse. And uh, so he was my roommate the toughest kid in school and I was the youngest kid in school. It was a It was a junior high. But they took me anyways because If I walked about a mile across the Kentucky River the swing bridge The other side Is a middle school that I could go to and then I can cut go to that school and I come back.
And then I stayed in the dorm and so basically only debaptist institute was my dorm When I went to this other other school My older brother went to uh went to the junior high. And so we were there for a couple of years um. Every kid had every kid had chores My older brother's chore was to work in the tobacco farm. You know, so tobacco they raised tobacco so that they could raise some extra money for the school Kind of like a penitentiary. And my job was just to clean the dorm and so I I was nine years old. I was cleaning toilets and For a dorm of a hundred hundred boys uh I cleaned more bathrooms than anybody and I just wished everybody was a little bit more careful. But anyways, I was the youngest kid in school. Then my memories of it was really good. Um, but it was a pretty it was a tough town. Sounds like yeah town kids they all carried everybody had knives. Oh, everybody had knives. Everybody smoked. Everybody had a zippo lighter. I smoked for a week.
Did you oh yeah, sure cold of you. I was nine. Yeah, well you nine you're nine you tried smoking. Yeah, I got myself a packet cigarettes everybody else did. Did you get sick? No, I got used to it, you know and at learn how to blow blow uh smoke rings and you know You know You know breathe out in my nose, you know take it in my nose. I mean there was a call all the different things that you learned. Yeah at nine. Yeah, why you just did it to fit in or yeah, because everybody else did it right yeah. And then I have I did it for a couple of weeks. I guess and I just rather have I had a quarter. You know at a quarter a month or something like that. I Just rather buy popsicles and Fragicicles with it. I was nine, you know, I said right. I chose I chose the the better path. Wow. That was our school and then my parents came to United States two years later and um We met him in Tacoma, Washington.
That's wild. It was a really crazy experience. What a strange formative experience. Yeah tough kids Thailand To one of the poorest places in America where if not the poorest As a nine-year-old Yeah, it's my first experience. Yeah with your brother. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, no, I used to remember and what breaks my heart probably the only thing that really breaks my heart of About that experience was so We didn't have enough money to make you know international phone calls every week. And so my parents gave us this tape deck This iwa tape deck and a tape. And so every month we would sit in front of that tape deck and that my older brother Jeff and I The two of us would just tell them what we did the whole month Wow. And we would send that tape by mail and my parents would take that tape And record back on top of it and send it back to us.
Wow, could you imagine it for two years? Wow, it's that tape still existed Of these two kids just describing their first experience with United States. Like I remember telling my parents That that uh i joined the swim team and Uh My roommate was really buff and so every day we spent a lot of time in the in the gym and so uh Every night hundred push ups hundred sit ups every day in the gym. So I was nine years old. I was getting I was pretty buff And I'm pretty fit and uh And so I joined the soccer team I joined the swim team because If you join the team they take you to meet and then afterwards you get to go to a nice restaurant. And that nice restaurant was McDonald's. And I recorded this thing. I said mom and dad we went to the most amazing restaurant today This whole place is lit up. It's like the future.
And the food comes in a box And the food is incredible the hamburger is incredible. It's McDonald's. But anyhow it wouldn't be amazing. Oh my god two years recording. Yeah two years. Yeah What a crazy connection to your parents too just sending a tape and then sending you in back. And it's the only way of communicating for two years. Yeah Wow. Yeah, no, my parents are incredible actually there's just they're They grew up really poor and When they came to United States they had almost no money. One of the most Impactful memories I have is is uh, we they came and we were we were staying in a in a apartment complex And And they had they had just rent back in the I guess people still do rent rent a bunch of furniture And We were messing around And uh We bumped into the coffee table and crushed it It was made out of particle wood and we crushed it And I just Still remember the logo my mom's face you know because they didn't have any money and she didn't know how she was gonna pay it back.
And but anyhow that's that kind of tells you How hard it was for them to come here, but they they left everything behind and all they had was their suitcase and The money had to add in your and their pocket and they came to United States. How old pursued time? Brink dream. They were in their 40s. Yeah late late 30s Pursue the American dream. This is this is the American dream. I'm the first generation of the American dream Wow Yeah, it's hard not to love this country That's it's hard not to be romantic about this country. That is a romantic story. That's an amazing story Yeah, and my dad found his job literally in the newspaper You know the ads And he calls people got a job What did he do? He was a consulting engineer And a consulting firm and they helped people build Oil refineries paper mills and fabs and that's what he did. He was and he's really good at factory design Instrumentation engineer and so He's brilliant at that and so he did that And my mom worked as a maid and They found a way to raise us Wow That's an incredible story jensen really is everything all of it from your childhood to The perils of in video almost falling It's really incredible man. It's a great story.
Yeah, I've lived a great life You really have and it's a great story for other people to hear too. It really is You don't you don't have to go to iV leaks tools to succeed This country creates opportunities has opportunities for all of us You do have to strive You have to claw your way here Yeah, but if you put in the work you can succeed Nobody works a lot of luck and a lot of A lot of good decision making and the good graces of others. Yeah That's really important.
Yeah, you and I spoke about two two people who are very dear to me Um, but the list goes on The people the people I didn't video who have have helped me Um, many friends that are on the board The decisions, you know them giving the me the opportunity like when we were inventing this new computing approach I tanked our stock price because we added this thing called kuda to the chip We had this big idea. We added this thing called kuda to the chip But nobody paid for it, but our cost doubled And so we had this graphics chip company And we invented GPUs we invented programmable shaders we invented everything modern computer graphics We invented real-time trade ray tracing. That's why it went from GTX to RTX We invented all this stuff, but every time we invented something The market doesn't know how to appreciate it, but the cost went way up.
And in the case of kuda that enabled AI The cost increased a lot it and but I really we really believed it You know, and so if you believe in that future And you don't do anything about it. You're going to regret it for your life And so we always you know, I always tell the team. Do you believe what do we believe this or not? And if you believe it and so grounded on first principles not random You know here say and we believe it we've got to we owe it to ourselves to go pursue it If we're the right people to go do it if it's really really hard to do it's worth doing and we believe it. Let's go pursue it.
在 kuda 推动 AI 的情况下,成本确实大幅增加,但我们真的相信这一点。如果你相信这样的未来却不采取行动,你会后悔一辈子。我总是告诉团队,我们是否真的相信这一点?如果我们相信,并且这种信念基于基本原则而不是道听途说,那我们就有责任去追求它。如果我们是合适的人选,即使这件事非常难,也是值得去做的。我们相信这点,所以让我们努力去实现它。
Well, we pursued it we we launched the product nobody knew it was exactly what like when I launched djx1 and the entire audience was like Complete silence When I launched kuda the Audience was complete silence no customer wanted it nobody asked for it Nobody understood it and video is a public company what yours is this is a See 2000 and 2006 20 years ago 2005 wow Our stock prices went I think our valuation went down to like Two or three billion dollars from from about 12 or something like that I crushed it In a very bad way Yeah, what is it now though?
Yeah, it's higher Very envelope it's higher, but it changed the world yeah that invention changed the world It's it's incredible story Johnson it really is Thank you like your story it's incredible my story is not as incredible my story is more weird You know Much more for two it is and weird okay, what are the three Milestones that most important milestones that led to here That's a good question um what will step one?
I think step one was seeing other people do it Step one was in the initial days of podcasting like in 2009 when I started podcasting and only been Around for a couple of years The first was Adam Curry my good friend who was the pot father he he invented podcasting and then you know I remember Adam Corolla had a show because he had a radio show his radio show got cancelled And so he decided to just do the same show but do it on the internet and that was pretty revolutionary
Nobody was doing that and then there was the experience that I had had doing Different morning radio shows like opian Anthony in particular because It was fun and we would just get together with a bunch of comedians You know, I'd be on the show with like three or four other guys that I knew and it was always just look for to it Which was just such a good time and I said god I miss doing that. It's so fun to do that
I wish I could do something like that And then I saw Tom Green set up Tom Green had a setup in his house And he essentially turned his entire house into a television studio and he did an internet show from his living room He had servers in his house and cables everywhere to step over cables I was this is like 2007. I'm like Tom. This is nuts like this is And I'm like you got to figure out a way to make money from this like
I wish everybody I wish everybody in internet could see your setup. It's nuts. I just wanted you guys know that It's not just this So that was the the beginning of it is just seeing other people do it and then saying all right Let's just try it and then so the beginning days we just did it on a laptop Had a laptop with a webcam and just messed around had a bunch of comedians come in we were just talk and Joke around then I did it like once a week and then I started doing it twice a week
And then also I was doing it for a year and then I was doing it for two years then I was like Oh, it's starting to get a lot of viewers a lot of listeners You know, and then I just kept doing it It's all it is. I just kept doing it because I enjoyed doing it. What was it? He set back No, no, there's never really a setback really no No, no, or you saw the same guy's you're just resilient or you're just tough No, no, no, no, wasn't tough or hard. It was just interesting.
So I just it the you were never once punched in the face No, not in the show. No, not really not not doing this you never did something that that Big blowback nope Not really no, it all just kept growing It kept growing and the thing stayed the same from the beginning to now and the thing is I enjoy talking to people. I've always enjoyed talking to interest I could even tell just when we walked in the way you interacted with everybody not just me
Yeah, that's cool people cool. Yeah, that's cool. You know, I It's an amazing gift to be able to have so many conversations with so many interesting people because if Changes the way you see the world because you see the world through so many different people's eyes And you have so many different people have different perspectives and different opinions and different philosophies and different life stories and you know
It's an incredibly enriching and educating experience having so many conversations with so many amazing people and That's all I started doing and that's all I do now even now when I Booked the show I do it on my phone and I basically go through this giant list of emails of all the people that want to be on the show or Requested to be on the show and then a factor in another list that I have of people that I would like to get on the show That I'm interested in and I just map it out
That's it. I go. Oh, I like to talk to him if it wasn't because of President Trump I wouldn't have been bumped up on that list Yeah, I wanted to talk to you already I just think you know what you're doing is very fascinating I mean how did not want to talk to you and then today you proved to be absolutely the right decision
Well, you know listen It's it's strange to be an immigrant one day Going to O'Neill Baptist Institute With with the students that were there and then here Invidia it's one of the most consequential companies in the history of companies It is a Crazy story. It has to be a current that journey is yeah, and it's very humbling and And I'm very grateful. It's pretty amazing surrounded by amazing people
You're very fortunate and you've also you seem very happy and you seem like you're 100% on the right path in this life You know, you know, you everybody says you must love your job not every day That's not hot. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, the beauty of everything. Yeah, is that there's ups and downs It's never just like this giant dopamine high.
We leave we leave this impression here here's here's an impression. I don't think it's healthy we People who are successful leave the impression often that they Our job gives us great joy. I think largely it does That our jobs were passionate about our work Um, and that passion relates to it's just so much fun. I think it largely is But it it distracts from in fact a lot of success comes from Really really hard work.
Yes there's long periods of suffering and loneliness and uncertainty and fear and embarrassment and humiliation all of the feelings that we most not love that creating something from the ground up and and Elon will tell you something similar Very difficult to invent invent something new.
Yeah, and people people Don't believe you all the time. You're humiliated often disbelieved most of the time And so so people forget that part of success and and I I don't think it's health I think it's it's good that we pass that forward and let people know that that it's just part of the journey. Yes
And then suffering is part of the journey. You will appreciate it so much these horrible feelings that you have when things are not going so well You will appreciate it so much more when they do go well deeply grateful. Yeah Yeah deep deep pride Incredible pride Incredible incredible gratefulness and and surely incredible memories
Absolutely Jansen, thank you so much for being here. Those are really fun. I really enjoyed it and your story is just absolutely incredible and very inspirational and And I you know, I think it really is the American dreamer. It is the American dreamer. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Bye everyone You