The U.S. is on an AI tear, racing against other nations like China to develop the most cutting-edge technology. It’s a shift that has many white-collar workers hand-wringing over their jobs being automated—but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is adamant that people returning to factory work is key for success.
“We want to re-industrialize the United States. We need to be back in manufacturing,” Huang said recently on theJoe Rogan Experience podcast. “Every successful person doesn’t need to have a PhD. Every successful person doesn’t have to have gone to Stanford or MIT.”
Huang believes more Americans need to take on manufacturing gigs—not just to pivot to where the work will be in the age of AI, but also because the entire industry could be at risk. As much as the thought of U.S. citizens heading back into factories may seem like a back-track, he said it impacts the nation’s ability to remain prosperous and build AI companies like his.
“If [the] the United States doesn’t grow, we will have no prosperity,” Huang continued. “We can’t 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. It’s as simple as that.”
