In a conversation that ranged from the automation of software to holodeck-style working environments, NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang explained why now is the moment to back a new generation of startups as part of this week’s GPU Technology Conference.
Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development and head of the NVIDIA Inception startup accelerator program, moderated the panel, which included CrowdAI CEO Devaki Raj and Babble Labs CEO Chris Rowen.
“AI is going to create a new set of opportunities, because all of a sudden software that wasn’t writable in the past, or we didn’t know how to write in the past, we now have the ability to write,” Huang said.
The conversation comes after Huang revealed on Monday that NVIDIA Inception, which nurtures startups revolutionizing industries with AI and data science, had grown to include more than 6,500 companies.
Another change, Huang envisioned workplaces transformed by automation, thanks to AI and robots of all kinds. When asked, by Rowen, about the future of NVIDIA’s own campus, Huang said NVIDIA’s building a real-life holodeck.
One day, these will allow employees from all over the world to work together. “People at home will be in VR, while people at the office will be on the holodeck,” Huang said.
Huang said he sees NVIDIA first building one. “Then I would like to imagine our facilities having 10 to 20 of these new holodecks,” he said.
More broadly, AI, Huang explained, will allow organizations of all kinds to turn their data, and their knowledge base, into powerful AI. NVIDIA will play a role as an enabler, giving companies the tools to transition to a new kind of computing.
He described AI as the “automation of automation” and “software writing software.” This gives the vast majority of the world’s population who aren’t coders new capabilities. “In a lot of ways, AI is the best way to democratize computer science,” Huang said.
For more from Huang, Herbst, Raj and Rowan, register for GTC and watch a replay of the conversation. The talk will be available for viewing by the general public in 30 days.