Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has clarified comments he made about the supposed "death of coding".
Huang had been criticized in the past for saying on several occasions that as AI platforms would soon be doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to coding, young people today should not necessarily consider learning it as a vital skill.
Speaking at the company's Nvidia GTC 2024 event in San Jose, Huang was asked at a press Q&A if he still believed this was the case - and it seems not much has changed.
Death of coding?
“I think that people ought to learn all kinds of skills,” Huang said, comparing learning to code to skills such as juggling, playing piano or learning calculus.
However, he did add that, “programming is not going to be essential for you to be a successful person...but if somebody wants to learn to do so (program), please do - because we’re hiring programmers.”
In the past, Huang had said that time otherwise spent learning to code should instead be invested in expertise in industries such as farming, biology, manufacturing and education, and that upskilling could be a key way forward, helping provide the knowledge of how and when to use AI programming.
Huang did also add that generative AI would require a number of new skills in order to close the technology divide.
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"You don’t have to be a C++ programmer to be successful,” he said. “You just have to be a prompt engineer. And who can’t be a prompt engineer? When my wife talks to me, she’s prompt engineering me."
"We all need to learn how to prompt AIs, but that’s no different than learning how to prompt teammates.”
These skills could be vital for younger people entering the workforce at an auspicious time, Huang went on to add.
"It (AI) Is a new industry - that's why we say there's a new industrial revolution," he declared, In the future, almost all of our computing will be generated."
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Mike Moore
Deputy Editor, TechRadar Pro
Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.
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