NVIDIA CEO Warns AI Job Predictions Could Harm Economy

Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA, says that predictions about AI eliminating jobs could be "hurtful" for the economy. Speaking to the Special Competitive Studies project, he suggests that forecasting the end of technology roles could discourage graduates from pursuing careers the US economy still requires.

"If we convinced all the young college graduates not to be software engineers, and it turns out the United States needs more software engineers than ever, that's hurtful," he says. "So we have to be mindful of how we communicate the importance of this technology and what it's able to do."

His remarks follow the news that nearly 80,000 tech employees were laid off in the first quarter of 2026, with, nearly half of those layoffs attributed to AI.

Jensen says business leaders need to exercise caution when discussing AI's workforce effects. He notes that such comments often come from chief executives who may overestimate their expertise.

CEO statements under scrutiny

"Comments about AI are often made by people who are like me, CEOs," he says. "And somehow, because they became CEOs you adopt a God complex, and before you know it you know everything. And so I think we have to be careful and really ground ourselves to talking about the facts."

Multiple companies have announced workforce reductions linked to AI investment, such as Meta, which plans to cut 8,000 jobs following increased spending on AI infrastructure.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, explained the decision by pointing to competing resource demands. "We basically have two major cost centres in the company: compute infrastructure and people-oriented things," he said.

"If we're investing more in one area to serve our community, then that means we have less capital to allocate to the other. So that means we do need to take down the size of the company somewhat."

Fintech and workforce reductions

Fintech firm Block also made significant cuts to its workforce, with Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block, attributing the cuts to new capabilities enabled by AI tools.

"Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company," he says. "A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better."

Other technology leaders have suggested such workforce changes could become more common. Dario Amodei, CEO and Co-founder of Anthropic, warned in an essay that AI could cause "unusually painful" disruption to employment.

He wrote: "New technologies often bring labour market shocks, and in the past, humans have always recovered from them, but I am concerned that this is because these previous shocks affected only a small fraction of the full possible range of human abilities, leaving room for humans to expand to new tasks."

"AI will have effects that are much broader and occur much faster, and therefore I worry it will be much more challenging to make things work out well."

Jensen responded to those comments at the time at a press briefing in Paris, saying: "One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they should do it. Two, [he believes] that AI is so expensive, nobody else should do it. And three, AI is so incredibly powerful that everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it.

"I think AI is a very important technology; we should build it and advance it safely and responsibly. If you want things to be done safely and responsibly, you do it in the open. Don't do it in a dark room and tell me it's safe.