The next phase of business-ready AI will feel more like onboarding an employee than writing hard code, says Jensen Huang, CEO of leading chipmaker Nvidia and the central figure in AI hardware development.
Speaking to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at the CRM giant’s Dreamforce conference, Huang on Tuesday (San Francisco time) said integrating AI into everyday business practices should eventually feel as natural as holding a conversation with a colleague.
“It’s going to be a lot more like onboarding an employee than writing software,” Huang said.
“It’s going to be a lot more like introducing and welcoming a team member, who will help you do something.
“And you’ll communicate with that person and with that agent, and explain what is the mission, show it examples and what the output would look like.
Huang said fully conversational models would allow workers to fine-tune the output of AI functions without digging into databases and hooking up APIs.
Those AI tools should also be empowered to ask questions when they run into roadblocks, he continued.
“If you’re not too clear about exactly what I’m asking you to help me do, you’re going to come back to me and say, ‘I’m not exactly clear,’” Huang said.
“We’re going to go back and forth. I’m going to show you more examples.”
Huang appeared alongside Benioff after the Salesforce CEO dedicated a keynote speech to Agentforce, the new platform connecting AI-powered tools to existing business data and processes.
“I wish I had called you before my keynote, because I would have loved to use that phrase,” Benioff told Huang.
Nvidia holds a venerated space in the AI sector, with its chipsets proving integral to many advanced computing processes.
That central role, and overarching market belief in the power of artificial intelligence, has propelled Nvidia to a US$2.84 trillion market capitalisation.
Yet life is not always easy at the top.
Nvidia’s market valuation tumbled by US$279 billion in one day earlier this month, as the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena to the company in relation to its investigation of AI powerhouses and their command of the market.
Nvidia’s share price has since recovered much of what it lost on September 3, but overarching concerns about the ability of AI to actually transform the economy continue to plague the sector.
Speaking at the event, Huang said AI technology is still in its infancy.
“Nobody should miss the next decade… you’re not going to want to miss this movie”, he said.
The author travelled to Dreamforce in San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.
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Senior Business Journalist
Focused on the small business sector, David’s work covers the political, regulatory, and economic issues facing Australian entrepreneurs. Prior to joining SmartCompany, he was a reporter for Business Insider Australia. You can follow him on LinkedIn.
