'Complete nonsense': Nvidia's Jensen Huang says AI won't kill software jobs

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, delivered a keynote speech (1) at Computex — the leading global exhibition (2) focused on AIoT and startups — on Monday. The exhibition’s theme was “AI Together” and Huang’s speech focused on agentic and physical AI, and what it means for the future.

According to Fortune Business Insights (3), the agentic AI market is currently valued at over $9 billion and is forecast to grow 40.5% by 2034.

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Given this expected growth, and the fact that agentic AI needs limited supervision to function, it’s fair that some workers might be worried about their jobs being replaced. EY’s Agentic AI in the Workplace Survey (4) found that 56% of workers are concerned about their own job security working alongside AI agents.

However, Huang feels differently.

Huang says software companies are in a good spot

Per Huang’s speech at Computex, he thinks it is an “incredible time to be a software company.” He said that, while people might think that agentic AI means all software companies will go out of business, it’s actually the opposite.

“Because there will be so many agents, the world will not be limited by the number of people,” he explained. “Therefore, those agents are going to use more tools than ever.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (5) projects that the overall employment of software developers will grow 15% from 2024 to 2034, which is faster than average for other occupations.

Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report (6)found that AI and Machine Learning Specialists and Software and Application Developers feature within the top fastest-growing roles at present.

AI could serve as a resource, not a replacement

In a working paper for Cornell University (7), researchers found that “the heaviest users [of agentic AI] tend to be knowledge workers, and they’re mostly using agents to boost productivity or assist with learning.”

In other words: the very people fearful of AI replacing them are the ones largely leveraging AI as a tool.

Huang added that “the software has to be presented to the agent in a way that the agent can use it.” Essentially, he is saying that people are still a vital part of the process, regardless of how heavily agentic AI is incorporated into work.

“People talk about AI reducing jobs — complete nonsense,” he said. “It’s causing more software engineers to be hired… Because the output is so incredible, people want to hire more software engineers. This is going to show up in our economy somehow soon.”

‘Complete nonsense’: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says AI won’t kill software jobs — and the data backs him up

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