Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang, CEO of Nvidia, a modern technology and US stock market company, says he wants young people to have “large doses of pain and suffering” to shape their character, CNBC reports.

He made the comment during an interview at Stanford University’s School of Business, explaining that he wants the next generation of entrepreneurs to be shaped by the ingredient that helped him succeed.

“I do not know how to do that [dar] I wish all of you Stanford students a lot of pain and suffering. Greatness comes from character, and character is not made by smart people, but by people who have suffered,” he said.

The folks at futurism.com wryly note that one of the main sources of pain and suffering for today’s youth is the fear that artificial intelligence (AI), the technology that has fueled Nvidia’s spectacular growth, will put them out of work.

Should young people be worried about artificial intelligence?

A report by the World Economic Forum published last May indicated that the labor market will undergo major changes in the near future, with almost a quarter of jobs changing over the next 5 years. A separate report by investment bank Goldman Sachs also warned in March 2023 that two-thirds of jobs in the US and Europe could be automated to at least some degree.

However, a study by the European Central Bank published in November found that the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) may reduce wages but has so far created rather than destroyed jobs, especially for the young and highly skilled.

As for the Nvidia boss, he said in an interview with Fortune magazine last week that he also gives a speech about “pain and suffering” to his company’s employees.

“I enjoy using the phrase ‘pain and suffering’ to this day. I say this joyfully because you want to improve the character of your company,” Huang said.

“People with very high expectations have very little resilience, and unfortunately resilience is the key to success. One of my great strengths is that I have very low expectations,” he told reporters at the financial magazine.

The Nvidia chapter has advice for parents as well

Huang’s new comments come after he issued another controversial piece of advice late last month, saying artificial intelligence had advanced enough that parents should no longer pressure their children to learn programming.

Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Huang said future students could be more profitable if they focused on fields such as science, engineering or agriculture.

“You probably remember that in the last 10-15 years, almost everyone who appeared on such a stage told you that it is vitally important that your children study computer science. Now everything is exactly the opposite,” he said.

“That’s why so many people are talking about artificial intelligence today, because for the first time you can imagine that everyone in your company can be a technologist,” the Nvidia boss added, stressing that “the technology gap has completely closed.”

He also said that tomorrow’s scientists, engineers and farmers will be able to use advanced computer systems independently thanks to the help of artificial intelligence. “Now you have a computer that will do what you tell it to do to help you automate your work, increase your productivity to become more efficient,” Huang added.

Obviously, many analysts and experts in the industry do not share his opinion on this matter.

For example, Patrick Moorhead, one of the veteran tech analysts, told The Register at the time that “I’ve been hearing for over 30 years that ‘XYZ is going to kill programming,’ but we still don’t have enough programmers.” ” “.

Enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has made Jensen Huang one of the richest people in the world

What is certain is that the development of AI models and systems has pushed Nvidia, the company that authoritatively dominates the production of graphics processors used by AI systems for their advanced computing, to the third most valuable company in the world, behind only Microsoft and Apple.

Shares of Nvidia were trading at $878 before the New York Stock Exchange opened on Monday. For comparison, Nvidia shares were worth $152 on December 22, 2022, the day before ChatGPT went public.

Although other companies later introduced their own AI systems, the chatbot developed by OpenAI is considered to be the one that created huge enthusiasm for AI systems.

The spectacular rise in Nvidia’s stock value in less than two years has made Jensen Huang significantly richer, and Bloomberg estimates that he is the 20th richest person in the world with a fortune of $77.5 billion.

Huang founded Nvidia with two other entrepreneurs, Curtis Prim and Chris Malachowski, in 1993 when he was 30 years old.