Nvidia's CEO says he would stop selling chips to a customer building AI without adequate safety controls.
Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in London that he would halt chip supply to any customer building unsafe AI. He added that he does not think today's level of concern about AI risk is actually warranted. His proposed fix is to accelerate development of containment and monitoring technology for AI systems. Nvidia is already building a team dedicated to selling that kind of monitoring tech to customers.
Nvidia controls the hardware nearly every major AI lab depends on, so a threat to cut off supply carries real weight. It is one of the few levers that could actually stop a lab in its tracks. But the same company now positioning itself as AI's safety backstop is also the one selling the GPUs that make unsafe AI possible, and stands to profit from both ends of that trade.
Call it safety as a sales channel: Nvidia gets to sound responsible while charging for the smoke detector next to the furnace it also sells.