Jensen Huang Says a Coworker Who Uses AI Well May Be a Bigger Threat to Your Job

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[The Financial News] Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Corporation, is drawing attention after saying that a coworker who uses artificial intelligence well could pose a greater threat to jobs than AI itself.
On the 23rd local time, Fortune reported that Huang advised people to be more wary of so-called "tokenmaxxing" coworkers who use AI to finish in minutes work that would otherwise take hours, rather than robots or algorithms themselves.
In a recent conversation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Huang said, "Most people will not lose their jobs because of AI."
Instead, he said, "Most people are more likely to lose their jobs to someone using AI."
He stressed that "what we need to do is make sure everyone uses AI," adding that whether workers embrace the technology will determine who survives in the future labor market.
That stands in contrast to the pessimism of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who warned that AI would eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs, and Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's head of AI.
Fortune said Huang's prediction is already becoming reality in the labor market. According to a report from the enterprise AI platform Writer, 60% of corporate executives said they are considering layoffs for employees who refuse to adopt AI.
By contrast, employees who actively use AI were three times more likely than their peers to receive a promotion or a pay raise last year. Four in 10 workers currently fear losing their jobs because of AI, and some are even deliberately sabotaging their company's AI strategy, but the market's rewards are clearly flowing to those with AI skills.
Huang explained that automating certain tasks with AI does not mean the job itself disappears. He said, "Your job, the purpose of your job, and the individual tasks you perform within that job are related, but they are not the same."
Citing Nvidia Corporation as an example, he said, "Software engineers who know how to work with AI are the most popular people in the company."
He added that AI has made his work much busier and more productive than before.
Nvidia Corporation is also putting an "AI-first" approach into practice in hiring. At the NVIDIA GTC conference in March, Huang drew attention when he said the company would offer incentives worth up to half of an engineer's salary in the form of "AI tokens" to attract top talent.
He added that the company is looking for skilled AI users not only in engineering, but also in marketing, finance, and other fields. Huang said that even a new graduate with sophisticated AI knowledge in marketing or finance would be exactly the kind of talent the company wants, suggesting that the key skill in the future job market will be the ability to use AI, regardless of major.
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jjyoon@fnnews.com Yoon Jae-jun Reporter