Jensen Huang’s AI Advice for College Graduates: ‘Run, Don’t Walk’

The fear that AI could displace human workers has become a concern of younger generations. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sees it differently. Technology, he says, “started a revolutionary wave”—one that today’s graduates are well positioned to ride. “I can’t think of a better time to start your life’s work,” Huang said during his keynote address at Carnegie Mellon University’s commencement ceremony yesterday (May 10). Instead of running away from AI, he urged graduates to embrace it. “It’s unlikely that AI will replace you, but someone is using AI better than you,” Huang said. “This is your time to help plan the next one—so run, don’t walk.”

Huang, 63, was born in Taiwan but began attending a boarding school in rural Kentucky at the age of nine. He later graduated from Oregon State University in 1984, “at the start of the PC Revolution,” and founded Nvidia over the next decade. The chip maker’s early years in gaming were rocky, including a near-bankruptcy scare in 1996.

Still, Huang’s leadership—and a well-timed pivot toward AI chips in the mid-2000s—has since turned Nvidia into the world’s most valuable public company, with a market capitalization of $5.3 trillion. The company’s rise increased Huang’s personal wealth; he is currently ranked as the eighth richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $188 billion.

Huang, who earned a Master’s degree in electrical engineering after living in Oregon, also received an honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree from Carnegie Mellon yesterday. The Pittsburgh-based school is where “AI started,” Huang said, pointing to its role in creating the ‘Logic Theorist’ in the 1950s, widely considered the first AI program.

If Huang graduated at the beginning of the PC era, today’s students are entering something even bigger: a transformation driven by the rapid spread of AI. “But what’s going to happen now is bigger than anything before.”

That change, however, comes with concerns about how AI could reshape the labor market, especially for young professionals. A growing body of research suggests that early career roles, particularly in fields such as coding and customer service, are declining. Unsurprisingly, anxiety is on the rise among younger workers. While nearly 58 percent of employees expect AI to have a high or very high impact on their jobs, that fear is even more pronounced among Gen Z, according to a recent survey from recruitment agency Randstad.

High-profile layoffs linked to AI don’t ease those worries. Earlier this year, Block cut 40 percent of its workforce, citing the benefits of technology productivity. Similar cuts have since been announced at companies including Snap, Meta and Microsoft.

Huang acknowledged that such concerns are natural since AI systems perform tasks such as writing software, driving cars, and generating images. But he emphasized the benefits of technology, including its potential to reduce technical skills gaps. “Only a fraction of people in the world know how to write software—now, anyone can ask AI to create something useful,” he said.

He is very optimistic about the job creation that accompanies the creation of AI infrastructure. As companies rush to build the data centers needed to power these systems, Huang said, they will give “America a chance to build again. Electrician, plumber, steel worker, technician, builder: this is your time.”

It’s not the first time Huang has highlighted the promise of commercial jobs in the AI ​​era. Earlier this year, he predicted that workers in these jobs could earn “six-figure salaries.” Not all CEOs share his optimism. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could replace half of all white-collar jobs, while Ford’s Jim Farley and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon have also expressed concern about how quickly industries can adapt.

Yes, many jobs will be automated, Huang said. But that doesn’t mean AI will directly replace humans. In fields like software engineering and radiology, where AI has already shown promise, workers using the technology can write more code and analyze more scans, potentially increasing demand for their role and widening the gap with those who don’t.

“We should not teach fear of the future,” said Huang. “We must use it with hope, responsibility and ambition.”