Jensen Huang seems to be the man with the future of AI in his hands, and it looks like he’s taken that role quite literally. Greg Brockman, the president and co-founder of OpenAI, has posted an image on Twitter of the Nvidia CEO dropping off the first of its DGX H200 AI GPUs in person.
Posing for a photo in front of the gigantic metal chassis and flanked on either side by both Brockman and Sam Altman, the Nvidia head honcho appears not only to have ensured the DGX H200 package was delivered successfully, but hand-sign it as well, with the accompanying message “to advance AI, computing, and humanity”.
Hmm. While there will be those hoping that OpenAI will use all this processing power for the good of the human race, it does strike as a tad optimistic given current concerns over misuse of the tech, although looking at the smiling faces here it does remind me of a proud family celebrating the birth of their firstborn rather than the portents of an uncertain AI future to come.
While OpenAI will be making use of the latest Nvidia hardware for the time being at least, the company has been working with a UAE investment firm to fund the group in its endeavours to design and manufacture AI acceleration processors of its own.
Current estimates suggest that this would require between $5 trillion and $7 trillion in funding, which is perhaps the best example of why Nvidia seems so far ahead of the AI processing game.
With recent profits from its AI business revealed to be more than $22 billion in a single quarter, Jensen certainly has plenty to smile about while the company continues to pump out extremely powerful, and extremely lucrative high-end AI hardware to stay ahead of the pack.
OpenAI has also hit the headlines recently with the news that Elon Musk has begun the process of suing the company. It was originally founded in 2015 by Musk, Altman and Brockman (amongst others) under a set of alleged principles that were supposedly inspired by doing the opposite of Google, in which OpenAI’s output would be “for the benefit of humanity”, non-profit generating, and open source.
Musk’s case rests on the assertion that OpenAI has not adhered to this founding agreement, and has instead pivoted to “personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world”.
So, for the advancement of AI, computing and humanity? Perhaps not. Still, it’s a lovely photo, although it looks like Altman missed the memo on the leather jacket dress code. Better luck next time, I guess.