#2422 - Jensen Huang

Jensen Huang is the founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, the company whose 1999 invention of the GPU helped transform gaming, computer graphics, and accelerated computing. Under his leadership, NVIDIA has grown into a full-stack computing infrastructure company reshaping AI and data-center technology across industries.www.nvidia.com www.youtube.com/nvidia Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Visible. Live in the know. Join today at https://www.visible.com Don’t miss out on all the action - Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up at https://dkng.co/rogan or with my promo code ROGAN GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). 21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). Pass-thru of per wager tax may apply in IL. 1 per new customer. Must register new account to receive reward Token. Must select Token BEFORE placing min. $5 bet to receive $200 in Bonus Bets if your bet wins. Min. -500 odds req. Token and Bonus Bets are single-use and non-withdrawable. Token expires 1/11/26. Bonus Bets expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 1/4/26 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:12Joe Rogan?

  Hello, Jackson.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Hey, Joe.

• 0:14Joe Rogan?

  Good to see you again. We were just talking about, was that the first time we ever spoke? Or was the first time we spoke at SpaceX?

• 0:20Speaker 02

  SpaceX.

• 0:20Joe Rogan?

  SpaceX, the first time. When you were giving Elon that crazy AI chip.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Right, DJX Spark.

• 0:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, ooh, that was a big moment.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  That was a huge moment.

• 0:28Joe Rogan?

  That felt crazy to be there. I was like, watching these wizards of tech, like, exchange information and you're giving him this crazy device, you know? And then the other time was, I was shooting arrows in my backyard and randomly get this call from Trump, and he's hanging out with you.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  President Trump called, and I called you.

• 0:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's just...

• 0:48Speaker 02

  We were talking about you.

• 0:51Joe Rogan?

  Is this weird that he's calling?

• 0:52Speaker 02

  We were talking about the UFC thing he was gonna do in his front yard.

• 0:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  And he pulls out, he's, "Jackson, look at this design." He's so proud of it. And I go, "You're gonna have a fight in the front lawn in the White House?" He goes, "Yeah, yeah, you're gonna come, this is gonna be awesome." And he's showing me his design, how beautiful it is. And he goes, and somehow, your name comes up. He goes, "Do you know Joe?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna be on his podcast." He's, "Let's call him."

• 1:23Joe Rogan?

  He's like a kid!

• 1:24Speaker 02

  I know, "Let's call him."

• 1:25Joe Rogan?

  It's so, he's like a 79-year-old kid.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Ah, he's so incredible.

• 1:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's an odd guy. Just very different, you know, like, what you'd expect from him, very different than what people think of him, and also just very different as a president. A guy who just calls you or texts you out of the blue. Also, he makes, when he texts you, you have an Android, so it won't go through with you, but with my iPhone, he makes the texts go big.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 1:51Joe Rogan?

  "USA is respected again!"

• 1:55Joe Rogan?

  All caps and it makes the text enlarge. It's kind of ridiculous.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Well, the one on one Trump, President Trump is very different. He surprised me. First of all, he's an incredibly good listener. Almost everything I've ever said to him, he's remembered.

• 2:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, people don't, they only want to look at negative stories about him or negative narratives about him. You know, you can catch anybody on a bad day. Like, there's a lot of things he does where I don't think he should do. Like, I don't think he should say to a reporter, "Quiet piggy." Like, that's pretty ridiculous. Also, objectively funny. I mean, it's unfortunate that it happened to her. I wouldn't want that to happen to her, but it was funny. Just ridiculous that the president does that. I wish he didn't do that. But other than that, like, he's, he's an interesting guy. Like, he's a lot of different things wrapped up into one person, you know?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  You know, part of, part of his charm, well, part of his genius is just he says what's on his mind.

• 2:54Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  And that's also-

• 2:56Joe Rogan?

  Which is like an anti-politician in a lot of ways.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  So you know what's on his mind is really what's on his mind.

• 3:02Joe Rogan?

  Which I think people prefer.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I do, I do that too.

• 3:05Joe Rogan?

  Some people, some people would rather be lied to.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but I, I like the fact that he's telling you what's on his mind. Almost every time he explains something, he says something. He starts with his, you could tell his love for America, what he wants to do for America. And everything that he thinks through is very practical and very common sense and, you know, it's very logical. And I still remember the first time I, I met him. And so this was, I, I'd never known him, never met him before. And Secretary Lutner called. And we met right before, right at the beginning of the administration. He said, he told me what was important to President Trump. That, that I-

• 3:52Speaker 02

  That United States manufactures onshore. And that was really important to him because because it's important to national security. He wants to make sure that that the important critical technology of our nation is built in the United States and that we re-industrialize and get good at manufacturing again because it's important for jobs.

• 4:11Joe Rogan?

  It just seems like common sense, right?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Incredible, common sense. And that was like literally the first conversation I had with Secretary Lutnick. And and he was talking about how how that he started, he started our conversation with Jensen, this is Secretary Lutnick. And I just want to let you know that you're a national treasure. Nvidia is a national treasure. And whenever you need access to the president, the administration, you call us, we're always going to be available to you. Literally, that was the first sentence.

• 4:49Joe Rogan?

  That's pretty nice.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  And it was completely true. Every single time I called, if I needed something, I want to get something off my chest, express some concern, they're always available. Incredible.

• 5:02Joe Rogan?

  It's just unfortunate we live in such a politically polarized society that you can't recognize good, common sense things if they're coming from a person that you object to. And that, I think, is what's going on here. I think most people generally, as a country, you know, as a giant community, which we are, it just only makes sense that we have manufacturing in America, especially critical technology like you're talking about. Like, it's kind of insane that we buy so much technology from other countries.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  If the United States doesn't grow, we will have no prosperity. We can't invest in anything domestically or otherwise. We can't fix any of our problems. If we don't have energy growth, we can't have industrial growth. If we don't have industrial growth, we can't have job growth. These, it's as simple as that.

• 5:54Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  And the fact that, the fact that he came into office and the first thing that he said was, "Drill, baby, drill." His point is, we need energy growth. Without energy growth, we can have no industrial growth. And that was, it saved, it saved the AI industry. I got to tell you flat out, if not for his pro-growth energy policy.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  We would not be able to build factories for AI, we would not be able to build chip factories. We won't surely won't be able to build supercomputer factories. None of that stuff would be possible. Without all of that, construction jobs would be challenged, right? Electrical, you know, electrician jobs, all of these jobs that are now flourishing would be challenged. And so I think he's got it right. We need energy growth. We want to re-industrialize the United States. We need to be back in manufacturing. Every successful person doesn't need to have a PhD. Every successful person doesn't have to have gone to Stanford or MIT. And I think, I think that that, that, you know, that sensibility is, is spot on.

• 6:56Joe Rogan?

  Now, when we're talking about technology growth and energy growth, there's a lot of people that go, "Oh, no, that's not what we need. We need to, you know, simplify our lives and get back." But the, the real issue is that we're in the middle of a giant technology race. And whether people are aware of it or not, whether they like it or not, it's happening. And it's a really important race. Because whoever gets to whatever the event horizon of artificial intelligence is, whoever gets there first has massive advantages in a huge way. Do you agree with that?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Well, first, the, the part, I, I will say that we are in a technology race, and we are always in a technology race. We've been in a technology race with somebody forever.

• 7:38Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Right? Since the Industrial Revolution, we've been in a technology race.

• 7:41Joe Rogan?

  Since the Manhattan Project.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:43Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Or, or, you know, even going back to the discovery of energy, right? The United Kingdom was where the Industrial Revolution was, if you will, invented. When they realized that they can turn steam and such into, into energy, into electricity. All of that was invented largely in Europe. And the United States capitalized on it. We were the ones that learned from it. We industrialized it. We diffused it faster than anybody in Europe. They were all stuck in discussions about...

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Policy and jobs and disruptions. Meanwhile, the United States was forming. We just took the technology and ran with it. And so I, I think we were always in, in a bit of a technology race. World War II was a technology race. Manhattan Project was a technology race. We've been in the technology race ever since during the Cold War. I think we're still in a technology race. It is probably the single most important race. It is the technology is, uh, it gives you superpowers. You know, whether it's information superpowers or energy superpowers or military superpowers is all founded in technology. And so technology leadership is really important.

• 9:00Joe Rogan?

  Well, the problem is if somebody else has superior technology, right? That's, that's the issue.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:05Joe Rogan?

  It seems like with the AI race, people are very nervous about it. Like, you know, Elon has famously said there was like 80% chance it's awesome. 20% chance we're in trouble. And people are worried about that 20% rightly so. I mean, that, you know, if you had 10 bullets in a, a revolver and, you know, you're, you took out eight of them and you still have 22 in there and you spin it, you're not going to feel real comfortable when you pull that trigger. It's terrifying.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:35Joe Rogan?

  And when we're working towards this ultimate goal of AI, it, it just, it's impossible to imagine that it wouldn't be of national security interest to get there first.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  We should, the question is what's there?

• 9:52Joe Rogan?

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• 11:03Joe Rogan?

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• 12:20Speaker 02

  That was the part that...

• 12:21Joe Rogan?

  What is there?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure.

• 12:23Joe Rogan?

  That's the problem.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  I don't think anybody really knows.

• 12:26Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy, though. Well, if I ask you, you're the head of Nvidia. If you don't know what's there, who knows?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's probably going to be much more gradual than we think. It won't be a moment. It won't be, it won't be as if somebody arrived and nobody else has. I don't think it's gonna be like that. I think it's gonna be things that just get better and better and better, better, just like technology does.

• 12:51Joe Rogan?

  So you are rosy about the future. You're, you're very optimistic about what's gonna happen with AI. Obviously, will you make the best AI chips in the world? You probably better be.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  If, if history is a guide, we were always concerned about new technology. Humanity has always been concerned about new technology. There are always somebody who's thinking, there are always a lot of people who are quite concerned, were quite concerned. And, and, and so if, if history is a guide, it is the case that all of this concern is channeled into making the technology safer. And so, for example, in the last several years, I would say AI technology has increased probably in the last two years alone, maybe a hundred X. Let's just give it a number, okay?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  It's like a car two years ago was a hundred times slower. So AI is a hundred times more capable today. Now, how did we channel that technology? How do we channel all of that power? We directed it to causing the AI to be able to think, meaning that it can take a problem that we give it, break it down step by step. It does research before it answers, and so it grounds it on truth. It'll reflect on that answer, ask itself, is this the best, you know, answer that I can give you? Am I certain about this answer? If it's not certain about the answer or highly confident about the answer, it'll go back and do more research.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  It might actually even use a tool, because that tool provides a better solution than it could hallucinate itself. As a result, we took all of that computing capability and we channeled it into having it produce a safer result, safer answer, a more truthful answer. Because as you know, one of the greatest criticisms of AI in the beginning was that it hallucinated.

• 14:51Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  And so if you look at the reason why people use AI so much today is because the amount of hallucination has reduced. You know, I use it almost, I, well, I used it the whole trip over here. And so, so I think the

• 15:06Speaker 02

  The capability, most people think about power. And they think about, you know, maybe as an explosion power. But the technology power, most of it is channeled towards safety. A car today is more powerful, but it's safer to drive. A lot of that power goes towards better handling. You know, I'd rather have a, well, you have a thousand horsepower truck. I think 500 horsepower is pretty good. No, a thousand better. I think a thousand's better.

• 15:36Joe Rogan?

  I don't know if it's better, but it's definitely faster.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think it's better. You get out of trouble faster. I enjoyed my 599 more than my 612. It was, I think it was better, better, and more horsepower is better. My 459 is better than my 430. More horsepower is better. I think more horsepower is better. I think it's better handling, it's better control. In the case of, in the case of technology, it's also very similar in that way. You know, and so if you, if you look at what we're going to do with the next thousand times of performance in AI, a lot of it is going to be channeled towards more reflection, more research, thinking about the answer more deeply.

• 16:20Joe Rogan?

  So when you're defining safety, you're defining it as accuracy?

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Functionality.

• 16:25Joe Rogan?

  Functionality, okay.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  It, it does what you expect it to do. And then you take all the, the technology and the horsepower, you put guardrails on it, just like our cars. We've got a lot of technology in a car today. A lot of it is, goes towards, for example, ABS. ABS is great. And so traction control, that's fantastic. Without, without a computer in the car, how would you do any of that?

• 16:50Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  And that little computer, the computers that you have doing your traction control is more powerful than a computer that went to Apollo 11. And so you want that technology, channel it towards safety, channel it towards functionality. And so when people talk about power, the advancement of technology, oftentimes I feel what they're thinking and what we're actually doing is very different.

• 17:14Joe Rogan?

  What do you think they're thinking?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Well, they're thinking somehow that this AI is being powerful and their mind probably goes towards a sci fi movie, the definition of power. You know, oftentimes the definition of power is military power or physical power. But in the case of technology power, when we translate all of those operations, it's towards more refined thinking, you know, more reflection, more planning, more options.

• 17:47Joe Rogan?

  I think the big fears that people have is one, a big fear is military applications.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 17:52Joe Rogan?

  That's a big fear.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:53Joe Rogan?

  Because people are very concerned that you're going to have AI systems that make decisions that maybe an ethical person wouldn't make or a moral person wouldn't make based on achieving an objective versus based on, you know, how it's going to look to people.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Well, I'm happy that our military is going to use AI technology for defense. And I think that Anduril, building military technology, I'm happy to hear that. I'm happy to see all these tech startups now channeling their technology capabilities towards defense and military applications. I think you need to do that.

• 18:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, we had Palmer Lucky on the podcast and he was demonstrating some of the stuff.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's incredible.

• 18:36Joe Rogan?

  Helmet on and he showed some videos how you could see behind walls and stuff. Like it's nuts.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  He's actually the perfect guy to go start that company, by the way.

• 18:43Joe Rogan?

  A hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's like he's born for that. Yeah, he came in here with a copper jacket on. He's a freak. It's awesome. He's awesome. But it's also, it's a, you know, an unusual intellect channeled into that very bizarre field is what you need.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  And I think it's, I think I'm happy that we're making it more socially acceptable.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  There was a time where when somebody wanted to channel their technology capability and their intellect into defense technology, somehow they're vilified. But we need people like that. We need people who enjoyed that part of application of technology.

• 19:24Joe Rogan?

  Well, people are terrified of war. Yeah, so it makes sense.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Well, the best way to avoid it has excessive military might.

• 19:31Joe Rogan?

  Do you think that's absolutely the best way? Not diplomacy, not working stuff out?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  All of it.

• 19:37Joe Rogan?

  All of it.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:38Joe Rogan?

  You have to have military might in order to get people to sit down with you.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Right, exactly, all of it.

• 19:43Joe Rogan?

  Otherwise, they just invade.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  That's right. Why ask for permission?

• 19:47Joe Rogan?

  Again, like you said, history. Go back and look at history.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 19:50Joe Rogan?

  When you look at the future of AI, and you just said that no one really knows what's happening, do you ever sit down and ponder scenarios? Like, what do you think is like best-case scenario for AI over the next two decades?

• 20:12Speaker 02

  The best-case scenario is that AI diffuses into everything that we do, and everything's more efficient, but the threat of war remains a threat of war. Cybersecurity remains a super difficult challenge. Somebody is going to try to breach your security. You're going to have thousands of millions of AI agents protecting you from that threat. Your technology is going to get better. Their technology is going to get better, just like cybersecurity.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Right now, while we speak, we're being...

• 21:01Speaker 02

  We're seeing cyber attacks all over the planet on just about every front door you can imagine. And, and yet you and I are sitting here talking. And so the reason for that is because we know that there's a whole bunch of cybersecurity technology in defense. And so we just have to keep amping that up, keep stepping that up.

• 21:24Joe Rogan?

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• 22:08Joe Rogan?

  Limited time offers subject to change. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. That's a big issue with people is the worry that technology is going to get to a point where encryption is going to be obsolete. Encryption is just, it's no longer going to protect data. It's no longer going to protect systems. Do you anticipate that ever being an issue? Or do you think that it's as the defense grows, the threat grows, the defense grows, and it just keeps going on and on and on? And they'll always be able to fight off any sort of intrusions?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Not forever. Some intrusion will get in, and then we'll all learn from it. And you know, the reason why cybersecurity works is because, of course, the technology of defense is advancing very quickly. The technology of offense is advancing very quickly. However, the benefit of the cybersecurity defense is that socially, the community, all of our companies work together as one. Most people don't realize this. There's a whole community of cybersecurity experts. We exchange ideas, we exchange best practices, we exchange what we detect.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  The moment something has been breached, or maybe there's a loophole, or whatever it is, it is shared by everybody, the patches are shared with everybody.

• 23:35Joe Rogan?

  That's interesting.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, most people don't realize this.

• 23:37Joe Rogan?

  No, I had no idea. I've assumed that it would just be competitive like everything else.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  No, no, we work together, all of us.

• 23:44Joe Rogan?

  Has that always been the case?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  It surely has been the case for about, about fifteen years. It might not have been the case long ago, but this...

• 23:53Joe Rogan?

  What do you think started off that cooperation?

• 23:55Speaker 02

  People recognizing it's a challenge and no company can stand alone. And the same thing is going to happen with AI. I think we all have to decide, working together to stay out of harms way is, is our best chance for defense. Then it's basically everybody against the threat.

• 24:15Joe Rogan?

  And it also seems like you'd be way better at detecting where these threats are coming from and neutralizing them too.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Exactly, because the moment you detect it somewhere, you're going to find out right away.

• 24:25Joe Rogan?

  It'll be really hard to hide.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 24:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  That's how it works, that's the reason why it's safe. That's why I'm sitting here right now, instead of, you know, locking everything down in Nvidia. Not only am I watching my own back, I've got everybody watching my back, and I'm watching everybody else's back.

• 24:42Joe Rogan?

  It's a bizarre world, isn't it, when you think about that, cyber threats?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  This idea about cybersecurity is unknown to the people who are talking about AI threats. They're, I think, when they think about AI threats and AI cybersecurity threats, they have to also think about how we deal with it today. Now, there's no question that AI is a new technology, and it's a new type of software, in the end it's software, it's just, it's a new type of software. And so it's going to have new capabilities, but so will the defense. You know, we'll use the same AI technologies to go defend against it.

• 25:16Joe Rogan?

  So, do you anticipate a time ever in the future where it's going to be impossible? Where there's not going to be any secrets? Where the bottleneck between the technology that we have and the information that we have, information is just all a bunch of ones and zeros, it's out there on hard drives, and the technology has more and more access to that information. Is it ever going to get to a point in time where there's no way to keep a secret?

• 25:43Joe Rogan?

  Because it seems like that's where everything is kind of headed in a weird way.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I think the quantum computers were supposed to, well, yeah, quantum computers will make it possible, will make it so that the previous quantum, previous encryption technology is obsolete. But that's the reason why the entire industry is working on post-quantum encryption technology now.

• 26:05Joe Rogan?

  What would that look like?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  New algorithms.

• 26:08Joe Rogan?

  Well, the crazy thing is when you hear about the kind of computation that quantum computing can do.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:15Joe Rogan?

  And the power that it has.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:17Joe Rogan?

  Where, you know, you're looking at all the supercomputers in the world, it would take billions of years, and it takes them a few minutes to solve these equations. Like, how do you make encryption for something that can do that?

• 26:27Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. But I've got a bunch of scientists who are working on that.

• 26:31Joe Rogan?

  Boy, I hope they could figure it out.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've got a bunch of scientists who are expert in that.

• 26:35Joe Rogan?

  Is the ultimate fear that it can't be breached? That quantum computing will always be able to decrypt all other quantum computing encryption?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 26:45Joe Rogan?

  That it just gets to some point where it's like, stop playing the stupid game. We know everything.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 26:51Joe Rogan?

  No?

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Because I'm, you know, history is guide.

• 26:54Joe Rogan?

  History is a guide before AI came around. That's my worry. My worry is this is a totally, you know, it's like history was one thing, and then nuclear weapons kind of changed all of our thoughts on war and mutually assured destruction came, got everybody to stop using nuclear bombs.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:12Joe Rogan?

  My worry is that...

• 27:13Speaker 02

  The thing is, Joe, is that AI is not gonna, it's not like we're cavemen and then all of a sudden, one day, AI shows up. Every single day, we're getting better and smarter because we have AI. And so we're stepping on our own AI's shoulders. So when, when that, whatever that AI threat comes, it's a click ahead. It's not a galaxy ahead. You know? It's just a click ahead. And so, so I think, I think the, the idea that somehow this AI is gonna pop out of nowhere and somehow think in a way that we can't even imagine thinking. And do something that we can't possibly imagine, I think is far fetched.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  And the reason for that is because we're all have, we all have AIs and, you know, there's a whole bunch of AIs being in development. We know what they are and we're using it. And, and so every single day, we're getting, we're close to each other.

• 28:10Joe Rogan?

  But don't they do things that are very surprising?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so you, you have an AI that does something surprising. I'm going to have an AI.

• 28:19Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  My AI looks at your AI and goes, that's not that surprising.

• 28:22Joe Rogan?

  The fear for the layperson like myself is that AI becomes sentient and makes its own decisions. And then ultimately decides to just govern the world, do it its own way. They're like, you guys, you had a good run, but we're taking over now.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but my, my AI is going to take care of me. So that's the, this is the cybersecurity argument.

• 28:48Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  You, you have an AI and it's super smart, but my AI is super smart too. And, and maybe your AI, let's pretend, let's, let's pretend for a second that we understand what consciousness is and we understand what sentient is and, and that.

• 29:03Joe Rogan?

  And we really are just pretending.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Okay, let's just pretend for a second that we, we believe that. I don't believe, I don't actually don't believe that, but nonetheless, let's pretend we believe that. So your, your, your AI is conscious and my AI is conscious. And, and let's say your AI is, you know, wants to, I don't know, do something surprising. My AI is so smart that it won't, it might be surprising to me, but it probably won't be surprising to my AI. And so maybe my AI thinks it's surprising as well, but it's so smart. The moment it sees it the first time, it's not going to be surprised the second time, just like us. And so I feel like, I think the idea that, that only one person has AI and that one person's AI is, compares everybody else's AI as Neanderthal.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Is probably unlikely. I think it's much more like cybersecurity.

• 29:58Joe Rogan?

  Hmm, interesting. I think the fear is not that your AI is gonna battle with somebody else's AI. The fear is that AI is no longer gonna listen to you. That's the fear, is that human beings won't have control over it after a certain point. If it achieves sentience and then has the ability to be autonomous.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  That there's one AI.

• 30:20Joe Rogan?

  Well, they just combine.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, becomes one AI.

• 30:23Joe Rogan?

  That it's a life form.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:25Joe Rogan?

  But that's the, there's arguments about that, right? That we're dealing with some sort of synthetic biology, that it's not as simple as new technology, that you're creating a life form.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  If it's like life form, let's go along with that for a while. I think if it's like life form, as you know, all life forms don't agree. And so I'm gonna have to go with your life form and my life form. I'm gonna agree, because my life form is gonna wanna be the super life form. And now that, now that we have disagreeing life forms, we're back, back again to where we are.

• 30:55Joe Rogan?

  Well, they would probably cooperate with each other. It would just, the reason why we don't cooperate with each other is we're territorial primates. But AI wouldn't be a territorial primate. It would realize the folly in that sort of thinking, and it would say, listen, there's plenty of energy for everybody. We don't need to dominate. We don't need, we're not trying to acquire resources and take over the world. We're not looking to find a good breeding partner. We're just existing as a new super life form that these cute monkeys created for us.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Okay, well, that would be, that would be a, a superpower with no ego.

• 31:41Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  And, and if it has no ego.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Why would have the ego to do any harm to us?

• 31:49Joe Rogan?

  Well, I don't assume that it would do harm to us. But the fear would be that we would no longer have control. And that we would no longer be the apex species on the planet. This thing that we created would now be. Is that funny?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  No. I just think it's not gonna happen.

• 32:07Joe Rogan?

  I know you think it's not gonna happen. But it could, right? And here's the other thing, it's like, if we're racing towards could. And could could be the end of human beings being in control of our own destiny.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  I just think it's extremely unlikely.

• 32:24Joe Rogan?

  That's what they said in the Terminator movie.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  And it hasn't happened.

• 32:28Joe Rogan?

  No, not yet, but you guys are working towards it. The thing about, you're saying about conscience and sentience. That you don't think that AI will achieve consciousness? Or that consciousness is specific?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's the definition?

• 32:42Joe Rogan?

  What is the definition to you?

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Consciousness.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  I guess first of all, you need to know about your own existence.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  You have to have experience, not just knowledge and intelligence.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  The concept of a machine having an experience. I'm not, well, first of all, I don't know what defines experience. Why we have experiences.

• 33:25Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  And why this microphone doesn't.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  And so, I think I know. Well, I think I, I think I know what consciousness is. The sense of experience, the ability to know self versus, versus.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  The ability to be able to reflect, know our own self, the sense of ego. I think all of, all of those human experiences probably is what consciousness is.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  But why it exists versus the concept of knowledge and intelligence, which is what AI is defined by today.

• 34:13Joe Rogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  It has knowledge, it has intelligence. Artificial intelligence, we don't call it artificial consciousness. Artificial intelligence, the ability to perceive, recognize, understand, plan, perform tasks. Those things are foundations of intelligence, to know things, knowledge. I don't, it's clearly different than consciousness.

• 34:47Joe Rogan?

  But consciousness is so loosely defined. How can we say that? I mean, doesn't a dog have consciousness?

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:52Joe Rogan?

  Dogs seem to be pretty conscious.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 34:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so, and that's a lower level consciousness than a human being's consciousness.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. Yeah, right. The question is what, lower level intelligence. It's lower level intelligence. But I don't know that's lower level consciousness.

• 35:07Joe Rogan?

  That's a good point, right.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Because I believe my dogs feel as much as I feel.

• 35:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, they feel a lot.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 35:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, they get attached to you.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 35:16Joe Rogan?

  They get depressed if you're not there.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  That's right, exactly.

• 35:19Joe Rogan?

  There's, there's definitely that.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:21Joe Rogan?

  Um, the, the concept of experience.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:25Joe Rogan?

  But isn't AI interacting with society? So, doesn't it acquire experience through that interaction?

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Um, I don't think interactions is experience. I think experience is, uh, experience is a collection of feelings, I think.

• 35:43Joe Rogan?

  You're aware of that AI, I forget which one, where they gave it some false information about one of the programmers having an affair with his wife, just to see how it would respond to it. And then when they said they were going to shut it down, it threatened to blackmail him and reveal his affair. And I was like, whoa, like, it's conniving. Like, if that's not learning from experience and being aware that you're about to be shut down, which would imply at least some kind of consciousness, or you could kind of define it as consciousness if you were very loose with the term. And if you imagine that this is going to exponentially become more powerful. Wouldn't that ultimately lead to a different kind of consciousness than we're defining from biology? Well, first of all,

• 36:27Joe Rogan?

  this episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Believe it or not, the holiday season is here again, and that means you might need to fill some seasonal roles, fast. Maybe you need extra cashiers or stockers, or maybe something more unique like a lead elf, or an expert gift wrapper, or a Zamboni driver. Whoever you're looking for, whatever skills you need to power through the rest of the year, ZipRecruiter is one of the best places to start your search. Because you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. And because ZipRecruiter helps sort through thousands of resumes and applications, showing you the most qualified and interesting ones first.

• 37:09Joe Rogan?

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• 37:53Joe Rogan?

  No monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and thousands of fee-free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you 5% cash back on a category you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, crazy high. It's nine times the national average. They're calling it the most rewarding way to bank. Go to chime.com/rogan. Takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank, banking services and Chime card, provided by Chime's bank partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for more details. Let's just break down what it probably did. It probably read somewhere, there's probably text, that, that in these consequences...

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Certain people did that.

• 38:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  I could imagine a novel.

• 38:46Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Having those words related.

• 38:49Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And so inside.

• 38:51Joe Rogan?

  It realizes its strategy for survival is blackmail.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  That it's just a bunch of numbers that that in the in the collection of numbers that relates to a husband cheating on a wife

• 39:06Speaker 02

  has subsequently a bunch of numbers that relates to blackmail and such things, however, whatever the revenge was.

• 39:14Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  And so it just spewed it out. And so it's just like, you know, it it's just as if I'm asking it to write me a poem in Shakespeare. It's just whatever the words are in the word in in that dimensionality, this dimensionality is all these vectors and and in multi-dimensional space, these words

• 39:37Speaker 02

  that were in the prompt that described the affair subsequently led to, one word after another, led to, you know, some revenge and something. But it's not because it had consciousness or, you know, it just spewed out those words, generated those words.

• 39:54Joe Rogan?

  I understand what you're saying.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:55Joe Rogan?

  That it learned from patterns that human beings have exhibited, both in literature and in real life.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 40:01Joe Rogan?

  But it at a certain point in time, one would say, okay, well, it couldn't do this two years ago, and it couldn't do this four years ago. Like, when we're looking towards the future, like, at what point in time when it can do everything a person does? What point in time do we decide that it's conscious? If it absolutely mimics all human thinking and behavior patterns.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  That doesn't make it conscious.

• 40:24Joe Rogan?

  It becomes indiscernible. It's it's aware, it can communicate with you the exact same way a person can. Like, is consciousness, are we putting too much weight on that concept? Because it seems like it's a version of a kind of consciousness.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  It's a version of imitation.

• 40:39Joe Rogan?

  Imitation consciousness, right. But if it perfectly imitates it.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  I still think it's a it's an example of imitation.

• 40:46Joe Rogan?

  So it's like a fake Rolex, when they 3D print them and make them like indiscernible?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  The question is, what's the definition of consciousness?

• 40:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:53Joe Rogan?

  That's the question, and I don't think anybody's really clearly defined that. That's what get where it gets weird, and that that's where the real doomsday people are worried, that you are creating a form of consciousness that you can't control.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  I believe it is possible to create a machine.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  That imitates human intelligence. And has the ability to understand information, understand instructions, break the problem down, solve problems, and perform tasks. I believe that completely. I believe that that um we could have a

• 41:40Speaker 02

  computer that has a vast amount of knowledge. Some of it true, some of it not true.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Some of it generated by humans, some of it generated synthetically. And more and more of knowledge in the world will be generated synthetically going forward. You know, until now, the knowledge that we've we have are knowledge that we generate and we propagate and we send to each other and we amplify it and we add to it and we modify it, we change it. In the future,

• 42:15Speaker 02

  in a couple of years, maybe two or three years, ninety percent of the world's knowledge will likely be generated by AI.

• 42:22Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I know, but it's just fine.

• 42:25Joe Rogan?

  But it's just fine.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  I know, and the reason for that is this. Let me tell you why.

• 42:30Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  It's because what difference does it make to me that I am learning from a textbook that was generated by a bunch of people I didn't know?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Or written by a book that, you know, from somebody I don't know? To a knowledge generated by AI computers that are assimilating all of this and resynthesizing things. To me, I don't think there's a whole lot of difference. We still have to, we still have to fact check it. We still have to make sure that it's, you know, based on fundamental first principles and we still have to do all of that, just like we do today.

• 43:05Joe Rogan?

  Is this taking into account the kind of AI that exists currently? And do you anticipate that just like we could have never really believed that AI would be, or at least a person like myself would never believe AI would be as so ubiquitous and so worth? It's so powerful today and so important today. We never thought that ten years ago, never thought that.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:26Joe Rogan?

  Imagine like, what are we looking at ten years from now?

• 43:33Speaker 02

  I, I think that if you reflect back 10 years from now, you would say the same thing, that we would have never believed that.

• 43:40Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  But

• 43:41Joe Rogan?

  In a different direction.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Right, but if you, if you go forward nine years from now, and then ask yourself, what's gonna happen 10 years from now? I think it'll be quite gradual.

• 43:54Joe Rogan?

  Um, one of the things that Elon said that makes me happy is he, he's, he believes that we're gonna get to a point where it's not, it's not necessary for people to work. And not meaning that you're gonna have no purpose in life, but you'll have, in his words, universal high income. Because so much revenue is generated by AI, that it will take away this need for people to do things that they don't really enjoy doing just for money. And I think, a lot of people have a problem with that, because their entire identity and who, how they think of themselves and how they fit in the community is what they do. Like, this is Mike, he's an amazing mechanic.

• 44:38Joe Rogan?

  Go to Mike, and Mike takes care of things. But, there's gonna come a point in time where AI's going to be able to do all those things, much better than, than people do. And people will just be able to receive money. But then, what does Mike do? And Mike is, you know, really loves being the best mechanic around. You know, what does the guy who, you know, codes, what does he do? When AI can code infinitely faster with zero errors? Like, what, what happens with all those people? And, that is where it gets weird. It's like, cause we've sort of wrapped our identity as human beings around what we do for a living.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 45:15Joe Rogan?

  You know, when you meet someone, one of the first things you meet somebody at a party, "Hi, Joe, what's your name? Mike, what do you do, Mike?" And, you know, Mike's like, "Oh, I'm a lawyer." "Oh, what kinda law?" And you have a conversation, you know? When Mike is like, "I get money from the government, I play video games."

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:29Joe Rogan?

  Gets weird.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:31Joe Rogan?

  And I think, um, the concept sounds great, until you take into account human nature. And human nature is that we like to have puzzles to solve, and things to do, and, and an identity that's wrapped around our idea that we're very good at this thing that we do for a living.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, um, let's see. Let me start with the more mundane. Okay. And I'll work backwards. Okay. Work forward. So, one of the predictions from Jeff Hinton, who started the whole deep learning phenomenon, deep learning technology trend, and incredible, incredible researcher, professor at University of Toronto. He invented, discovered, or invented the idea of backpropagation, which allows the neural network to learn.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  And, um, and as you know, for the audience, software historically was humans applying first principles and our thinking to describe an algorithm that is then codified, just like a recipe that's codified in software. It looks just like a recipe, how to cook something, looks exactly the same, just in a slightly different language. We call it Python, or C, or C++ or whatever it is. In the case of deep learning, this invention of artificial intelligence, we put a structure

• 47:13Speaker 02

  of a whole bunch of neural networks and a whole bunch of math units. And we make this large structure, it's like a switchboard of little mathematical units, and we connect it all together. And we give it the input that the software would eventually receive. And we just let it randomly guess what the output is. And so we say, for example, the input could be a picture of a cat. And, and one of the outputs of the switchboard is where the cat signal is supposed to show up.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  And all of the other signals, the other one's a dog, the other one's an elephant, the other one's a tiger, and all of the other signals are supposed to be zero when I show it a cat, and the one that is a cat should be one.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  And I show it a cat through this big, huge network of switchboards and math units. And they're just doing multiply and adds, multiplies and adds, okay? And, and, and this thing, this switchboard is gigantic. The more information you're going to give it, the more, the bigger this switchboard has to be. And what Jeff Hinton discovered was a, invented was a way for you to guess that, put the cat signal in, put the cat image in, and that cat image, you know, could be a million numbers, because it's, you know, a megapixel image, for example. And it's just a whole, a whole bunch of numbers.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  And somehow, from those numbers, it has to light up the cat signal. Okay, that's the bottom line. And if it, the first time you do it, it just comes up with garbage. And so it says, "The right answer is cat." And so you need to increase this signal and decrease all of the other, and back propagates the outcome through the entire network. And then you show it another, now it's an image of a dog. And it guesses it, takes a swing at it, and it comes up with a bunch of garbage. And you say, "No, no, no, the answer is this is a dog. I want you to produce dog."

• 49:40Speaker 02

  And all of the other switch, all the other outputs have to be zero. And I want to back propagate that and just do it over and over and over again. It's just like showing a kid, "This is an apple, this is a dog, this is a cat." And you just keep showing it to them until they eventually get it. Okay, well anyways, that big invention is deep learning. That's the foundation of artificial intelligence. A piece of software that learns from examples. That's basically we, machine learning, a machine that learns. And so, so one of the, the big first applications was image recognition.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  And one of the most important image recognition applications is radiology. And so, so he predicted about five years ago that in five years' time, the world won't need any radiologists, because AI would have swept the whole field. Well, it turns out AI has swept the whole field. That is completely true. Today, just about every radiologist is using AI in some way. And what's ironic, though, what's interesting is that the number of radiologists has actually grown. And so the question is why? That's kind of interesting, right?

• 51:04Joe Rogan?

  It is.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  And so the prediction was, in fact, that 30 million radiologists will be wiped out. But as it turns out, we needed more. And the reason for that is because the purpose of a radiologist is to diagnose disease, not to study the image. The image studying is simply a task to, in service of diagnosing the disease. And so now, the fact that you could study the images more quickly and more precisely without ever making a mistake and never gets tired, you could study more images, you could

• 51:46Speaker 02

  study it in 3D form instead of 2D, because, you know, the AI doesn't care whether it studies images in 3D or 2D. You could study it in 4D. And so now you could study images in a way that radiologists can't easily do, and you could study a lot more of it. And so the number of tests that people are able to do increases. And because they're able to serve more patients, the hospital does better. They have more clients, more patients. As a result, they have better economics. When they have better economics, they hire more radiologists, because their purpose is not to study the images. Their purpose is to diagnose disease.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  And so the question is, what I'm leading up to is, ultimately, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of the lawyer? And has the purpose changed? What is the purpose? You know, one of the examples that I gave is, that I would give is, for example, if my car became self-driving... Will all chauffeurs be out of jobs? The answer probably is not. Because for some per- for some chauffeurs, they, for some people who are driving you, they could be protectors. Some people, um, they're part of the experience, part of the service. So when you get there, they, you know, they could take care of things for you. And so for a lot of different reasons, not all chauffeurs would lose their jobs.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Some chauffeurs would lose their jobs. And, uh, many chauffeurs would change their jobs. And the type of applications of autonomous vehicles will probably increase. You know, the usage of the technology within find new homes. And so I, I think you have to go back to what is the purpose of a job? You know, like for example, if AI comes along, I actually don't believe I'm gonna lose my job because my purpose isn't to, I have to look at a lot of documents. I study a lot of emails. I look at a bunch of diagrams, you know? The question is, what is the job? And, and the purpose of somebody probably hasn't changed. A lawyer, for example, help people. That probably hasn't changed.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Studying legal documents, generating documents is part of the job, not the job.

• 54:00Joe Rogan?

  But don't you think there's many jobs that AI will replace?

• 54:05Speaker 02

  If your job is the task. Yeah, if your job is the task.

• 54:08Joe Rogan?

  Right, so automation.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:10Joe Rogan?

  Factory workers.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  If your job is the task.

• 54:12Joe Rogan?

  That's a lot of people.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  It could be a lot of people, but it'll probably generate, like for example, uh, let's say we, let's say, uh, I'm super excited about the, the, the robots Elon's working on. It's still a few years away. When it happens, when it happens, um, there's a whole new industry of technicians and people who have to manufacture the robots, right? And so that, that job never existed. And so you're gonna have a whole industry of people. Taking care of, like, for example, you know, all the mechanics and all the people who are building things for cars, supercharging cars, that didn't exist before cars, and now we're

• 54:57Speaker 02

  gonna have robots, you're gonna have robot apparel, so a whole industry of, right, isn't that right, because I want my robot to look different than your robot.

• 55:05Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  And so, you're gonna, you're gonna have a whole apparel industry for robots, you're gonna have mechanics for robots, and you have, you know, people who come to maintain your robots.

• 55:16Joe Rogan?

  Don't you think that'll all be automated, though?

• 55:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 55:17Joe Rogan?

  You don't think so?

• 55:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 55:18Joe Rogan?

  You don't think that'll be all done by other robots?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Eventually, and then there'll be something else.

• 55:22Joe Rogan?

  So you think ultimately people just adapt, except if you are the task?

• 55:29Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 55:29Joe Rogan?

  Which is a large percentage of the workforce.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  If your job is just to chop vegetables, cuisine art's gonna replace you.

• 55:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so people have to find meaning in other things.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Your job has to be more than the task.

• 55:41Joe Rogan?

  What do you think about Elon's belief that this universal basic income thing will eventually become necessary? Many people think that, Andrew Yang thinks that, he was one of the first people to sort of sound that alarm during the 2020 election.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess, yeah, both ideas probably won't exist at the same time, and, and as in life, things will probably be in the middle. One idea, of course, is that there'll be so much abundance of resource that nobody needs a job, and we'll all be wealthy. On the other hand, we're gonna need universal basic income. Both ideas don't exist at the same time.

• 56:31Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  And so, we're either gonna be all wealthy, or we're gonna be all using-

• 56:37Joe Rogan?

  How could everybody be wealthy, though? What scenario do you-

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Well, because wealthy, not because you have a lot of dollars, wealthy because there's a lot of abundance. Like, for example, today, we are wealthy of information. You know, this is some, a concept several thousand years ago, only a few people have. And so, today, we have wealth of a whole bunch of things, resources that, that-

• 56:59Joe Rogan?

  That's a good point.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  And so, we're gonna have wealth of resources, things that we think are valuable today, that in the future are just not, not that valuable, you know, and so, because it's automated. And so, I think, I think the question- Maybe, maybe partly, it's hard to answer partly because

• 57:21Speaker 02

  it's hard to talk about infinity and it's hard to talk about a long time from now. And the reason for that is because

• 57:30Speaker 02

  there are just too many scenarios to, to consider, but I think, I think in the next several years, call it five to 10 years.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  There are several things that I, I believe in hope. And I say hope because I'm not sure. One of the things that I believe is that the technology divide will be substantially collapsed.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  And of course, the alternative viewpoint is that AI is going to increase the technology divide. Now, the reason why I believe AI is going to reduce the technology divide is because we have proof. The evidence is that AI is the easiest application in the world to use. ChatGPT has grown to almost a billion users, frankly, practically overnight. And if you're not exactly sure how to use, everybody knows how to use ChatGPT, just say something to it. If you're not sure how to use ChatGPT, you ask ChatGPT how to use it. No tool in history has ever had this capability.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  A Quesadote, you know, if you don't know how to use it, you're kind of screwed. You're not walk up to it and say, how do you use a Quesadote? You're going to have to find somebody else. And so, but an AI will just tell you exactly how to do it. Anybody could do this. It'll speak to you in any language. And if it doesn't know your language, you'll speak it in that language and it'll probably figure out that it doesn't completely understand your language. Go learns it instantly and comes back and talk to you. And so I think the, the technology divide has a real chance finally, that you don't have to speak Python or C++ or FORTRAN, you can just speak human in whatever form of human you like. And so I think that that has a real chance of closing the technology divide. Now, of course, the counter narrative would say that

• 59:27Speaker 02

  AI is only going to be available for the nations and the countries that have a vast amount of resources because AI takes energy and AI takes a lot of GPUs and factories to be able to produce the AI. No doubt at the scale that we would like to do in the United States. But the fact of the matter is your phone's going to run AI just fine all by itself, you know, in a few years. Today, it already does it fairly decently. And so the fact that every country, every nation, every, every society will have to benefit of very good AI. It might not be tomorrow's AI.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  It might be yesterday's AI, but yesterday's AI is freaking amazing. You know, in 10 years' time, nine-year-old AI is going to be amazing. You don't need a 10-year-old AI. You don't need frontier AI like we need frontier AI because we want to be the world leader. But for every single country, everybody, I think the capability to elevate everybody's knowledge and capability and intelligence, that day is coming.

• 1:00:34Joe Rogan?

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• 1:01:19Speaker 04

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• 1:01:52Joe Rogan?

  And also, energy production, which is the real bottleneck when it comes to third world countries and

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:01:59Joe Rogan?

  Electricity and all the resources that we take for granted.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Almost everything is going to be energy constrained. And so if you take a look at one of the most important technology advances in history is this idea called Moore's Law. Moore's Law was the, started basically in my generation. And my generation is the generation of computers. I graduated in 1984, and that was basically at the very beginning of the PC revolution. And the microprocessor. And, and every single year, it approximately doubled. And we describe it as every single year, we doubled the performance. But what it really

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  means is that every single year, the cost of computing halved. And so, the cost of computing, in a course of five years, reduced by a factor of 10. The amount of energy necessary to do computing, to do any task, reduced by a factor of 10. Every single 10 years, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, so on and so forth. And so each one of the clicks of Moore's Law, the amount of energy necessary to do any computing reduced. That's the reason why you have a laptop today. When, back in 1984, it sat on the desk, you got to plug

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  in, it wasn't that fast, and it consumed a lot of power. Today, you know, it is only a few watts. And so Moore's Law is the fundamental technology, the fundamental technology trend that made it possible. Well, what's going on in AI? The reason why Nvidia is here is because we invented this new way of doing computing. We call it accelerated computing. We started it 33 years ago. Took us about 30 years to really made a huge breakthrough. In that, in that 30 years or so, we took computing, you know, probably a factor of, well, let me just say in the last 10 years. The last 10 years, we improved the performance of computing by 100,000 times.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Imagine a car, over the course of 10 years, it became 100,000 times faster. Or, at the same speed, 100,000 times cheaper. Or, at the same speed, 100,000 times less energy. If your car did that, it doesn't need energy at all. What I mean, what I'm trying to say is that, in 10 years' time, the amount of energy necessary for artificial intelligence for most people will be miniscule. Utterly miniscule. And so, we'll have AI running in all kinds of things, and all the time, because it doesn't consume that much energy. And so, if you're a nation that uses AI for, you know,

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  almost everything in your social fabric, of course, you're gonna need these AI factories. But for a lot of countries, I think you're gonna, you're gonna have excellent AI, and you're not gonna need as much energy. Everybody will be able to come along, is my point.

• 1:05:09Joe Rogan?

  So, currently, that is a big bottleneck, right? Is energy.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is the bottleneck.

• 1:05:14Joe Rogan?

  The bottleneck. Is this, so was it Google that is making nuclear power plants to operate one of its AI factories?

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I haven't heard that. But I think in the next six, seven years, I think you're gonna see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors.

• 1:05:30Joe Rogan?

  And by small, like how big are you talking about?

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Hundreds of megawatts, yeah.

• 1:05:34Joe Rogan?

  Okay. And that these will be local, the two, whatever specific company they have?

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  That's right. Will all be power generators.

• 1:05:41Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  You know, just like, just like your, you know, somebody's farm.

• 1:05:46Joe Rogan?

  It probably is the smartest way to do it, right?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  And it takes the burden off, yeah, takes the burden off the grid. It takes, and you could build as much as you need. And you can contribute back to the grid.

• 1:05:57Joe Rogan?

  It's a really important point that I think you just made about Moore's Law, and the relationship to pricing. Because, you know, a laptop today, like you can get one of those little MacBook Airs, they're incredible. They're so thin, unbelievably powerful, battery life is crazy.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  You don't ever have to charge it.

• 1:06:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, battery life is crazy. And it's not that expensive, relatively speaking, like something like that.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  And that's just Moore's Law.

• 1:06:20Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Then there's the Nvidia Law.

• 1:06:22Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Just, right? The law I was talking to you about, the computing that we invented.

• 1:06:27Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  The reason why we're here, this new, this new way of doing computing, is like, Moore's Law on- Energy drinks. I mean, it's it's like Moore's Law.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, Moore's Law and Joe Rogan.

• 1:06:43Joe Rogan?

  Wow, that's interesting.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's us.

• 1:06:46Joe Rogan?

  So, explain that. This chip that you brought to Elon. What's the significance of this? Like, why is it so superior?

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  And so

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  in 2012, Jeff Hinton's lab, this gentleman I was talking about,

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Ilya Sushkabur, Alex Kraszewski,

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  they made a breakthrough in computer vision. And literally, creating a piece of software

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  called AlexNet. And its job was to recognize images. And it recognized images at a level, computer vision, which is fundamental to intelligence. If you can't perceive, you can't, it's hard to have intelligence. And so, computer vision is a fundamental pillar of, not the only, but fundamental pillar of. And so, breaking

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  computer vision, or breaking through in computer vision, is pretty foundational to almost everything that everybody wants to do in AI. And so, in 2012,

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  their lab in Toronto

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  made this breakthrough called AlexNet. And AlexNet was able to recognize images

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  so much better than any human-created computer vision algorithm in the 30 years prior. So, all of these people, all these scientists, and we had many too, working on computer vision algorithms. And these two kids, Ilya and Alex, under Jeff Hinton, took a giant leap above it. And it was based on this thing called AlexNet, this neural network. And the way it ran, the way they made it work was literally buying two Nvidia graphics cards. Because Nvidia's GPUs, we've been working on this new way of doing computing.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  And our GPUs application, and it's basically a supercomputing application back in 1984, in order to

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Process, computer games, and what you have in your racing simulator, that is called an image generator supercomputer. And so Nvidia started, our first application was computer graphics. And we applied this new way of doing computing where we do things in parallel instead of sequentially. A CPU does things sequentially. Step one, step two, step three. In our case, we break the problem down and we give it to thousands of processors. And so our way of doing computation is much more complicated.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  But if you're able to formulate the problem in the way that we created called CUDA, this is the invention of our company. If you could formulate it in that way, we could process everything simultaneously. Now, in the case of computer graphics, it's easier to do because every single pixel on your screen is not related to every other pixel. And so I could render multiple parts of the screen at the same time. Not completely true, because you know, maybe, maybe the way lighting works or the way shadow works, there's a lot of dependency and such. But computer graphics with all the, with all the pixels, I should be able to process everything simultaneously.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  And so we, we took this embarrassingly parallel problem called computer graphics and we applied it to this new way of doing computing. Nvidia's accelerated computing. We put it in all of our graphics cards. Kids were buying it to play games. We're, you probably don't know this, but we're the largest gaming platform in the world today.

• 1:10:48Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I know that.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:10:50Joe Rogan?

  I used to make my own computers. I used to buy your graphics cards.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Oh, that's super cool.

• 1:10:53Joe Rogan?

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• 1:11:35Joe Rogan?

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• 1:12:17Joe Rogan?

  high-quality, German-made creatine monohydrate, and that matters. This Creovitalis is made in Germany under tight quality control and is 99.9% pure. So you're not getting some cheap version cut with fillers. If you want a high-quality supplement made with the right stuff, AG1 Pro is a no-brainer. Go to drinkag1.com/joe for a limited time. Get a free immune support bundle, including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D tossed in with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro, backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee. That's drinkag1.com/joe.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love it. Okay, that's super cool.

• 1:13:04Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, man, I used to be a Quake junkie.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:13:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so SLI, I'll tell you the story in just a second, and how it led to Elon. I'm still answering the question. And so anyways, these two kids trained this model using the technique I described earlier on our GPUs because our GPUs could process things in parallel. It's essentially a supercomputer in a PC. The reason why you used it for Quake is because it is the first consumer supercomputer. Okay, and so anyways.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  They made that breakthrough. We were working on computer vision at the time. It caught my attention. And so we went to learn about it. Simultaneously, this deep learning phenomenon was happening all over, all over the country. Universities after another recognized the importance of deep learning. And all of this work was happening at Stanford, at Harvard, at Berkeley, just all over the place. New York University, Yann Le Cun, Andrew Yang at Stanford, so many different places. And I see it cropping up everywhere. And so my curiosity asked, you know, what is so special about this form of machine learning? And we've known about machine learning for a very long time.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  We've known about AI for a very long time. We've known about neural networks for a very long time. What makes now the moment? And so we realized that this architecture for deep neural networks, back propagation, the way deep neural networks were created, we could probably scale this problem, scale the solution to solve many problems. That is essentially a universal function approximator. Okay, meaning, meaning, you know, back when you're in, in, in school, you have a, you have a, you have a box. Inside of it is a function. You give it an input, it gives you an output. And, and the reason why I call it a universal function approximator

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  is that this computer, instead of you describing the function, a function could be a Newton's equation, f equals ma. That's a function. You write the function in software. You give it input, f, a mass, acceleration, it'll tell you the force. Okay? And the way this computer works is really interesting. You give it a universal function. It's not f equals ma, just a universal function. It's a big, huge, deep neural network. And instead of describing the inside, you give it examples of input and output, and it figures out the inside. So you give it input and output, and it figures out the inside.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  A universal function approximator. Today, it could be Newton's equation. Tomorrow, it could be Maxwell's equation. It could be Coulomb's law. It could be thermodynamics equation. It could be, you know, Schrödinger's equation for quantum physics. And so you could put any, you could have this describe almost anything, so long as you have the input and the output. So long as you have the input and the output. Or it could learn the input and output. And so we took a step back, and we said, hang on a second. This isn't just for computer vision. Deep learning could solve any problem. All the problems that are interesting, so long as we have input and output. Now, what has input and output?

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Well, the world. The world has input and output. And so we could have a computer that could learn almost anything. Machine learning, artificial intelligence. And so we reasoned that maybe this is the fundamental breakthrough that we needed. There were a couple of things that had to be solved. For example, we had to believe that you could actually scale this up to giant systems. It was running in a, they had two graphics cards, two GTX 580s. Which, by the way, is exactly your SLI configuration.

• 1:17:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Okay. So that GTX 580 SLI was the revolutionary computer that put deep learning on the map.

• 1:17:20Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  It was 2018, and you were using it to play quick.

• 1:17:24Joe Rogan?

  Wow, that's crazy.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  That was the moment. That was the big bang of modern AI. We were lucky, because we were inventing this technology, this computing approach. We were lucky that they found it. Turns out, they were gamers, and it was lucky they found it. And it was lucky that we paid attention to that moment. It was a little bit like, you know, that Star Trek, you know, first contact.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  The Vulcans had to have seen the warp drive at that very moment. If they didn't witness the warp drive, you know, they would have never come to Earth. And everything would have never happened. It's a little bit like if I hadn't paid attention to that moment, that flash. And that flash didn't last long. If I hadn't paid attention to that flash, or our company didn't pay attention to it, who knows what would have happened? But we saw that, and we reasoned our way into this is a, this is a universal function approximator. This is not just a computer vision approximator. We could use this for all kinds of things if we could solve two problems. The first problem is that we have to prove to ourselves it could scale. The second problem we had to

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  wait for, I guess, contribute to and wait for, is the world will never have enough data on input and output where we could supervise the AI to learn everything. For example, if we have to supervise our children on everything they learn, the amount of information they could learn is limited. We needed the AI, we needed the computer to have a method of learning without supervision. And that's where we had to wait a few more years. But unsupervised AI learning is now here, and so the AI could learn by itself. And, and the reason why the AI could learn by itself is because

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  we have many examples of right answers. Like, for example, if I want to learn, if I want to teach an AI how to predict the next word, I could just grab it, grab a whole bunch of text that we already have, mask out the last word, and make it try and try and try again until it predicts the next one. Or I mask out random words inside, inside the text, and I make it try and try and try until it predicts it. You know, like Mary, Mary goes down to the bank. Is it a river bank or a money bank? Well, if you're going to go down to the bank, it's probably a river bank. Okay, so, and it, it might not be obvious even from that. It might need

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  And caught a fish. Okay, now you know it must be the riverbank. And so you give these AIs a whole bunch of these examples and you mask out the words, it'll predict the next one. Okay? And so unsupervised learning came along. These two ideas, the fact that it's scalable and unsupervised learning came along. We were convinced that we had to put everything into this and help create this industry because we're going to solve a whole bunch of interesting problems. And that was in 2012. By 2016, I had built this computer called the DGX-1. The one that you saw me give to Elon is called DGX Spark.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  The DGX-1 was $300,000. It cost Nvidia a few billion dollars to make the first one. And instead of two chips SLI, we connected eight chips with a technology called NVLink. But it's basically SLI supercharged. Okay? And so we connected eight of these chips together instead of just two. And all of them worked together, just like your quake rig did, to solve this deep learning problem, to train this model. And so we created this thing. I announced it at GTC and at one of our annual events.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  And I described this deep learning thing, computer vision thing, and this computer called DGX-1. The audience was like completely silent. They had no idea what I was talking about. And I was lucky because I had known Elon and I helped him build the first computer for Model 3, the Model S. And when he wanted to start working on autonomous vehicle, I helped him build the computer that went into the Model S AV system, his full self-driving system. We were basically the FSD computer version one. And so.

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  We're already working together. And when I announced this thing, nobody in the world wanted it. I had no purchase orders, not, not one. Nobody wanted to buy it. Nobody wanted to be part of it. Except for Elon. He goes, he was at the event and we were doing a fireside chat about the future of self-driving cars. I think it was like 2016. Yeah, twenty, maybe, at that time it was 2015. And he goes, you know what? I have a company that could really use this. I said, wow, my first customer. And so, so I was pretty excited about it. And he goes, uh, yeah, uh, we have this company.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  It's a nonprofit company. And all the blood drained out of my face. Yeah. I just spent a few billion dollars building this thing. It cost $300,000. And, you know, the, the chances of a nonprofit being able to pay for this thing is approximately zero. And he goes, you know, this is a, it's an AI company and it's a nonprofit. And, and, uh, we could really use one of these supercomputers. And so I, I picked it up. I built the first one for ourselves. We're using it inside the company. I boxed one up. I drove it up to San Francisco and I delivered it to Elon in 2016. A bunch of researchers were, were there. Peter Beal was there, Ilya was there and there was a bunch of people there.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  And, uh, I walked up to the second floor where they were all kind of in a room. This smaller than your place here. And, and, uh, that place turned out to be OpenAI.

• 1:24:03Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  2016.

• 1:24:06Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:24:08Speaker 02

  Bunch of people sitting in a room.

• 1:24:10Joe Rogan?

  It's not really a nonprofit anymore though, is it?

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  They're not, they're not nonprofit anymore. Yeah.

• 1:24:15Joe Rogan?

  Weird how that works.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But anyhow, anyhow Elon was there. The, yeah, it was, it was really a great, great moment. Oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's it.

• 1:24:25Joe Rogan?

  Look at you, bro, same jacket.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Look at that. I haven't aged. Not, not a lick of black hair though.

• 1:24:32Joe Rogan?

  Uh, the size of it is, uh, it's significantly smaller. That was the other day.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  Okay, so, oh yeah, there you go.

• 1:24:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, look at the difference.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  Exactly the same industrial design.

• 1:24:43Joe Rogan?

  He's holding it in his hand.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Here's the amazing thing. DGX One was one petaflops. Okay. That's a lot of flops. And DGX Spark is one petaflops. Nine years later.

• 1:25:01Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  The same, the same amount of computing horsepower.

• 1:25:06Joe Rogan?

  In a much smaller.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  Shrunk and down.

• 1:25:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  And instead of $300,000, it's now $4,000.

• 1:25:11Joe Rogan?

  And it's the size of a small book.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 1:25:15Joe Rogan?

  Crazy.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  That's how technology moves. Anyways, that's the reason why I wanted to give him the first one.

• 1:25:20Joe Rogan?

  It's so.

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  Because I gave him the first one in 2016.

• 1:25:23Joe Rogan?

  It's so fascinating. I mean, if you wanted to make a story for a film, I mean, that would be the story that like, what, what better scenario? If, if, if it really does become a digital life form, how funny would it be that it is birthed out of the desire for computer graphics for video games?

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:25:45Joe Rogan?

  Isn't it kind of cra- it's kind of crazy.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:47Joe Rogan?

  Kind of crazy when you think about it that way. Because.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Well, it's just.

• 1:25:52Joe Rogan?

  It's a perfect origin story.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Computer graphics was one of the hardest computer, supercomputer problems. Generating reality.

• 1:26:01Joe Rogan?

  And also one of the most profitable to solve because computer games are so popular.

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  When Nvidia started in 1993, we were trying to create this new computing approach. The question is, what's the killer app? And the, the problem we wanted to, the, the company wanted to create a new type of computing problem, a computing architecture, a computing, a new type of computer that can solve problems that normal computers can't solve. Well, the applications that existed in the industry in 1993 are applications that normal computers can solve. Because if the normal computers can't solve them, why would the application exist?

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  And so we had a mission statement for a company that has no chance of success.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  But I didn't know that in 1993. It just sounded like a good idea. Right. And so if we created this thing that can solve problems, you know, it's like,

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  you actually have to go create the problem.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  And so that's what we did.

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  In 1993, there was no quake. John Carmack hadn't even reduced Doom, released Doom yet.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  You probably remember that. Sure, yeah. And, and there were no applications for it. And so I went to Japan because the arcade industry had this, at the time of Sega, if you remember. Sure. The arcade machines, they came out with 3D arcade systems. Virtual Fighter, Daytona, Virtual Cop. All of those arcade games were in 3D for the very first time. And the technology they were using was from Martin Marietta. The flight simulators, they took the guts out of a flight simulator and then put it into an arcade machine.

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  The system that you have over here, it's got to be a million times more powerful than that arcade machine. And that was a flight simulator for NASA. Whoa. And so they took the guts out of that. They were, they were using it for flight simulation for jets and, you know, space shuttle. And they took the guts out of that. And Sega had this brilliant computer developer. His name is Yu Suzuki. Yu Suzuki and Miyamoto, Sega and Nintendo, these were the, you know, the incredible pioneers, the visionaries, the incredible artists, and they're both very, very technical.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  They were the origins, really, of the gaming industry. And Yu Suzuki pioneered 3D graphics gaming. And so I went, we created this company and there were no apps. And we were spending all of our afternoons, you know, we told our family we were going to work, but it was just the three of us, you know, who's gonna know? And so we went to Curtis's, one of the founders, went to Curtis's townhouse. And Chris and I were married, we have kids. I already had Spencer and Madison, they were probably two years old. And Chris's kids are about the same age as ours.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  And we would go to work in this townhouse, but, you know, when you're a startup and the mission statement is the way we described, you're not gonna have too many customers calling you. And so we had really nothing to do. And so after lunch, we would always have a great lunch. After lunch, we would go to the arcades and play the Sega, you know, the Sega Virtual Fighter and Daytona and all those games. And analyze how they're doing it, trying to figure out how they were doing that. And so we decided, let's just go to Japan and let's convince Sega to move those applications into the PC.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  And we would start the PC gaming, the 3D gaming industry partnering with Sega. That's how Nvidia started.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  And so in exchange for them part, developing their games for our computers in the PC, we would build a chip for their game console. That was the partnership. I build a chip for your game console, you port the Sega games to us. And

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  And then they paid us, you know, at the time, quite a significant amount of money to build that game console. And that was kind of the beginning of Nvidia getting started. And we thought we were on our way. And so, so I started with a business plan, a mission statement that wasn't possible. We lucked into the Sega partnership. We started taking off, started building our game console. And about a couple of years into it, we discovered our first technology didn't work. It was, it would have been a flaw. It was a flaw. And all of the technology ideas that we had, the architecture concepts were, were sound,

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  but the way we were doing computer graphics was exactly backwards. You know, instead of, I won't bore you with the technology, but instead of inverse texture mapping, we were doing forward texture mapping. Instead of triangles, we did curved surfaces. So other people did it flat, we did it round. Other technology, the technology that ultimately won, the technology we use today, has, has Z buffers, it automatically sorted. We had an architecture with no Z buffers, the application had to sort it. And so we chose a bunch of technology approaches that, three major technology choices, all three choices were wrong.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is how incredibly smart we were. And so, and so in 1995, 19, early, mid 95, we realized we were going down the wrong path. Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley was packed with 3D graphics startups because it was the most exciting technology of that time. And so 3D FX and rendition and Silicon Graphics was coming in, Intel was already in there and, you know, gosh, what added up eventually to a hundred different startups we had to compete against. Everybody had chosen the right technology approach and we chose the wrong one. And so we were the first company to start.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  We found ourselves essentially dead last with the wrong answer. And so, the company was in trouble.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  And ultimately, we had to make several decisions. The first decision is, well, if we change now, we will be the last company. And even if we changed into the technology that we believe to be right, we'd still be dead. And so that argument, you know, do we change and therefore be dead? Don't change and make this technology work somehow? Or go do something completely different?

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  That question stirred the company strategically and was a hard question. I eventually, you know, advocated for, we don't know what the right strategy is, but we know what the wrong technology is. So let's stop doing it the wrong way. And let's give ourselves a chance to go figure out what the strategy is. The second thing, the second problem we had was our company was running out of money. And I had, I was in a contract with Sega, and I owed them this game console. And if that contract would have been canceled, we'd be dead. We would have vaporized instantly. Phew.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  And so, so I went to Japan and I explained to the CEO of Sega, Iri Madury, really great man. He was the former CEO of Honda USA, went back to Sega to run Sega, went back to Japan and run Sega. And I explained to him that, and I was, I guess I was, what, thirty, thirty-three years old? You know, when I was thirty-three years old, I still had acne. And I got this, this, you know, Chinese kid, I was super skinny. And he, he was already kind of elder.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  And I went to him and I said, I said, listen, I've got some bad news for you. And, and first, the technology that we promised you doesn't work. And second,

• 1:35:34Speaker 02

  We shouldn't finish your contract. Because we'd waste all your money and you would have something that doesn't work. And I recommend you find another partner to build your game console.

• 1:35:46Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  And so I'm terribly sorry that we've set you back in your product roadmap. And third, even though you're gonna, I'm asking you to let me out of the contract. I still need the money. Because if you didn't give me the money, we'd vaporize overnight. And so I explained it to him humbly, honestly. I gave him the background. I explained to him why the technology doesn't work. Why we thought it was going to work. Why it doesn't work.

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  And I asked him to convert the last $5 million that they were going to complete the contract. To give us that money as an investment instead. And he said, "But it's very likely your company will go out of business, even with my investment." And it was completely true. Back then, 1995, $5 million was a lot of money. It's a lot of money today. $5 million was a lot of money. And here's a pile of competitors doing it right.

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  What are the chances that giving Nvidia $5 million? That we would develop the right strategy? That he would get a return on that $5 million or even get it back? Zero percent. Phew. You do the math, it's zero percent. If I were sitting there right there, I wouldn't have done it. $5 million was a mountain of money to Sega at the time. And so I told him that if you invested that $5 million in us, it is most likely to be lost. But if you didn't invest that money, we'd be out of business and we would have no chance.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  And I told him that I...

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  I don't even know exactly what I said in the end, but I told him that I would understand if he decided not to, but it would make the world to me if he did.

• 1:38:17Joe Rogan?

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• 1:38:59Joe Rogan?

  Go to chime.com/rogan. Takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank, banking services and Chime card, provided by Chime's bank partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for more details. This episode is brought to you by Noco. You're miles from home, you turn the key, nothing. Dead battery. Normally, that means finding another car, someone willing to give you a jump, and dealing with old jumper cables. But what if you didn't need any of that? Keep a Noco portable jump starter in your glove box and jump start your car yourself. No cables, no second vehicle, no waiting for help. It also works as a power bank and

• 1:39:43Joe Rogan?

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• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  He went off and thought about it for a couple of days and came back and said, "We'll do it."

• 1:39:59Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:40:02Joe Rogan?

  Did you have a strategy to how to correct what it was doing wrong?

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, wait. Oh, man. Wait until I tell you the rest of it's scary, even scarier.

• 1:40:12Joe Rogan?

  Oh, no.

• 1:40:15Speaker 02

  And so, so, um, so what he, what he decided was, was, uh, Jensen was a young man he liked. That's it.

• 1:40:28Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:40:30Speaker 02

  To this day.

• 1:40:31Joe Rogan?

  That's nuts.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  I was.

• 1:40:33Joe Rogan?

  Boy, you owe, what the world owes that guy.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  No doubt.

• 1:40:38Joe Rogan?

  Right?

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  Like, what, he's, he's celebrated, he celebrated today in Japan.

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  And if he would have kept that five, the, the investment, I think it'd be worth probably about a trillion dollars today.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  I know. But the moment we went public, they sold it. They goes, wow, that's a miracle.

• 1:41:01Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  They sold it, yeah, they sold it at Nvidia valuation about 300 million. That's our IPO valuation, 300 million.

• 1:41:10Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:41:12Speaker 02

  And so, so anyhow, I was incredibly grateful.

• 1:41:19Speaker 02

  And then, now we had to figure out what to do. Because we still were doing the wrong strategy, the wrong technology. So unfortunately, we had to lay off most of the company. We shrunk the company all back. All the people working on the game console, you know, we had to shrink it all, shrink it all back. And, um,

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  and then, and then somebody told me that, but Jensen,

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  we've never built it this way before. We've never built it the right way before.

• 1:41:49Speaker 02

  We've only know how to build it the wrong way.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  And so, nobody in the company knew how to build this

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  supercomputing image generator, 3D graphics thing that Silicon Graphics did. And so, so, uh, I said, okay, how hard can it be? You got all these 30 companies, you know, 50 companies doing it. How hard can it be? And so, luckily,

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  there was a textbook written by the company Silicon Graphics.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  And so I went down to the store. I had 200 bucks in my pocket. And I bought three textbooks, the only three they had, $60 apiece. I bought the three textbooks. I brought it back and I gave one to each one of the architects and I said, read that and let's go save the company.

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  And so.

• 1:42:44Speaker 02

  So they read this textbook, learned from the giant at the time, Silicon Graphics, about how to do 3D graphics. But the thing that was amazing, and what makes Nvidia special today, is that the people that are there are able to start from first principles, learn best-known art, but re-implement it in a way that's never been done before. And so, when we reimagined the technology of 3D graphics, we reimagined it in a way that manifests today, the modern 3D graphics.

• 1:43:25Speaker 02

  We really invented modern 3D graphics, but we learned from previous known arts, and we implemented fundamentally differently.

• 1:43:34Joe Rogan?

  What did you do that changed it?

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  Well, you know, ultimately, ultimately, the simple answer is that the way Silicon Graphics works, the geometry engine, is a bunch of software running on processors. We took that and eliminated all the generality, the general purpose-ness of it, and we reduced it down into the most essential part of 3D graphics, and we hardcoded it into the chip. And so, instead of something general purpose, we hardcoded it very specifically into just

• 1:44:19Speaker 02

  the limited applications, limited functionality necessary for video games. And that capability, that super, and because we reinvented a whole bunch of stuff, it supercharged the capability of that one little chip. And our one little chip was generating images as fast as a $1 million image generator. That was the big breakthrough. We took a million-dollar thing, and we put it into the graphics card that you now put into your gaming PC. And that was our big invention. And then, and of course, the question is, is...

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  How do you compete against these thirty other companies doing what they were doing? And there, we did several things. One, instead of building a 3D graphics chip for every 3D graphics application, we decided to build a 3D graphics chip for one application. We bet the farm on video games. The needs of video games are very different than the needs for CAD, needs for flight simulators. They're related, but not the same. And so, we narrowly focused our problem statement so I could reject all of the other complexities, and we shrunk it down into this one little focus, and then we supercharged it for gamers.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  And then, the second thing that we did was we recreated a whole ecosystem of working with game developers and getting their games ported and adapted to our silicon so that we could get, turn essentially what is a technology business into a platform business, into a game platform business. So, G-Force is really, today, it's also the most advanced 3D graphics technology in the world, but a long time ago, G-Force is really the game console inside your PC. It runs Windows, it runs Excel, it runs PowerPoint, of course, those are easy things. But its fundamental purpose was simply to turn your PC into a game console.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  So, we were the first technology company to build all of this incredible technology in service of one audience, gamers. Now, of course, in 1993, the gaming industry didn't exist, but by the time that John Carmack came along and the Doom phenomenon happened, and then Quake came out, as you know...

• 1:46:52Speaker 02

  That entire, oh, that entire community boom took off.

• 1:46:56Joe Rogan?

  Do you know where the name Doom came from?

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:59Joe Rogan?

  It came from this, there's a scene in the movie The Color of Money. Where Tom Cruise, who's this elite pool player, shows up at this pool hall and this local hustler says, "What do you got in the case?" And he opens up this case, he has a special pool cue, he goes, "In here." And he opens it up, he goes, "Doom." And that's where it came from.

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 1:47:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because Carmack said that's what they wanted to do to the gaming industry.

• 1:47:21Speaker 02

  Doom.

• 1:47:22Joe Rogan?

  That when Doom came out, it would just be, everybody'd be like, "Oh, we're fucked."

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:47:26Joe Rogan?

  This is Doom.

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:47:27Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that amazing?

• 1:47:28Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:47:28Joe Rogan?

  Because it's the perfect name for the game.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:31Joe Rogan?

  And the name came out of that scene in that movie.

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  That's right. Well, and then, of course, Tim Sweeney and Epic Games and

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  and the 3D gaming genre took off.

• 1:47:43Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:47:44Speaker 02

  And so, if you just kind of, in the beginning was no gaming industry. We had no choice but to focus the company on one thing. That one thing.

• 1:47:53Joe Rogan?

  It's a really incredible origin story.

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  Oh, it's.

• 1:47:57Joe Rogan?

  It's amazing. Like, you must be like, look back.

• 1:47:59Speaker 02

  Started with a disaster is what.

• 1:48:00Joe Rogan?

  That $5 million, that pivot with that conversation with that gentleman. If he did not agree to that, if he did not like you, what would the world look like today? That's crazy.

• 1:48:10Speaker 02

  Then, then our entire life hung on another gentleman. And so, so now, here we are, we built, so before GeForce, it was Reva 128. Reva 128 saved the company. It revolutionized computer graphics. The performance, cost performance ratio of 3D graphics for gaming was off the charts amazing.

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  And

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  we're getting ready to ship it. Get what? Well, we're building it. But we're, so, as you know, $5 million doesn't last long. And so, every single month, every single month, we were drawing down.

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  You have to build it, prototype it, you have to design it, prototype it.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  Get the silicon back, which costs a lot of money.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  Test it with software.

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  Because without the software testing the chip, you don't know the chip works.

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  And then you're gonna find a bug, probably. Because every time you test something, you find bugs.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  Which means you have to tape it out again. Which is more time, more money. And so we did the math, there was no chance somebody was gonna survive it. We didn't have that much time to tape out a chip, send it to a foundry, TSMC, get the silicon back, test it, send it back out again. There was no shot, no hope.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  And so, the math, the spreadsheet, doesn't allow us to do that. And so, I heard about this company. And this company built this machine.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  And this machine is an emulator. You could take your design, all of the software that describes the chip. And you could put it into this machine, and this machine will pretend it's our chip. So I don't have to send it to the fab, wait until the fab sends it back, test. I could have this machine pretend it's our chip, and I could put all of the software on top of this machine, call it emulator, and test all of the software on this pretend chip, and I could fix it all before I send it to the fab. And if I could do that, when I send it to the fab, it should work.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  Nobody knows, but it should work. And so, we came to the conclusion.

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  That let's take half of the money we had left in the bank. At the time, it was about a million dollars. Take half of that money and go buy this machine. So instead of keeping the money to stay alive, I took half of the money to go buy this machine. Well, I called this guy up. This company's called Icos. Called this company up and I said, hey, listen, I heard about this machine. I'd like to buy one. And they go, oh, that's terrific, but we're out of business. I said, what? You're out of business? He goes, yeah, we had no customers. I said, wait, hang on a second. So you never made the machine?

• 1:51:34Speaker 02

  They go, no, no, no, we made the machine. We have one in inventory if you want it, but we're out of business. So I bought one out of inventory. Okay. After I bought it, they went out of business. Wow. I bought it out of inventory. And on this machine, we put Nvidia's chip into it. And we tested all of the software on top. And at this point, we were on fumes. But we convinced ourselves that chip is going to be great. And so I had to call some other gentleman. So I called TSMC. And I told TSMC, listen, TSMC is the world's largest founder today.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  At the time, they were just a few hundred million dollars large. Tiny little company. And I explained to them what we were doing. And I explained to them, I told them I had a lot of customers. I had one, you know, Diamond Multimedia. Probably one of the companies you bought the graphics card from back in the old days. And I said, you know, we have a lot of customers and the band's really great. And we're going to tape out a chip to you. And I like to go directly to production. Because I know it works.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  And they said, nobody has ever done that before. Nobody has ever taped out a chip that worked the first time. And nobody starts out production without looking at it. But I knew that if I didn't start the production, I'd be out of business anyways. And if I could start the production, I might have a chance. And so TSMC decided to support me. And this gentleman is named Morris Chang. Morris Chang is the father of the foundry industry, the founder of TSMC, really great man. He decided to support our company.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  I explained to them everything. He decided to support us, frankly, probably because they didn't have that many other customers anyhow. But they were grateful and I was immensely grateful. And as we were starting the production, Morris flew to United States and he didn't so many words ask me so, but he asked me a whole lot of questions that was trying to tease out, do I have any money? But he didn't directly ask me that, you know? And so the truth is that we didn't have all the money. But we had a strong PO from the customer.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  And if it didn't work, some wafers would have been lost. And I'm, you know, I'm not exactly sure what would have happened, but we would have come short. It would have been, it would have been rough. But they supported us with all of that risk involved. We launched this chip, turns out to have been completely revolutionary, knocked the ball out of the park. We became the fastest growing technology company in the history to go from zero to $1 billion.

• 1:55:02Joe Rogan?

  So wild that you didn't test the chip.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  I know. We tested afterwards, yeah. We tested afterwards.

• 1:55:08Joe Rogan?

  Afterwards, but you went into production already.

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  But by the way, by the way, that methodology that we developed to save the company is used throughout the world today.

• 1:55:21Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we changed, we changed the whole world's methodology of designing chips, the whole world's rhythm of designing chips. We changed everything.

• 1:55:31Joe Rogan?

  How well did you sleep those days? It must have been so much stress.

• 1:55:38Speaker 02

  You know, um.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  What is that feeling where the world just kind of feels like it's flying? You have this, what do you call that feeling? You can't, you can't stop the feeling that everything's moving super fast. And, you know, you're laying in your, laying in bed and the world just feels like, you know, and you're, you feel deeply anxious, completely out of control. I've felt that probably a couple of times in my life. It's during that time.

• 1:56:21Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was incredible.

• 1:56:24Joe Rogan?

  What an incredible success story.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  But I learned, I learned a lot. I learned, I learned about, I learned several things. I learned, I learned how to develop strategies. I learned how to, and when I, when I, you know, our company learned how to develop strategies. What are winning strategies? We learned how to create a market. We created the modern 3D gaming market. We learned how, and, and so that exact same skill is how we created the modern AI market. It's exactly the same.

• 1:56:55Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly the same skill, exactly the same blueprint. And we learned how to deal with crisis, how to stay calm, how to think through things systematically. We learned how to remove all waste in the company and work from first principles and doing only the things that are essential. Everything else is waste because we have no money for it.

• 1:57:24Speaker 02

  To live on fumes at all times. And the feeling, no different than the feeling I had this morning when I woke up, that you're going to be out of business. That you're, you know, the phrase 30 days from going out of business, I've used for 33 years.

• 1:57:43Joe Rogan?

  You still feel that?

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:46Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Every morning.

• 1:57:48Joe Rogan?

  But you guys are one of the biggest companies on planet Earth.

• 1:57:50Speaker 02

  But the feeling doesn't change.

• 1:57:52Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:57:53Speaker 02

  The sense of vulnerability, the sense of uncertainty, the sense of insecurity, it doesn't leave you.

• 1:58:02Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:58:03Speaker 02

  We were, you know, we had nothing. We had nothing. We were dealing with giant.

• 1:58:08Joe Rogan?

  And you still feel that?

• 1:58:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Every day. Every moment.

• 1:58:13Joe Rogan?

  Do you think that fuels you? Is that part of the reason why the company's so successful? That you have that hungry mentality? That you never rest? You're never sitting on your laurels. You're always on the edge.

• 1:58:27Speaker 02

  I have a greater drive from not wanting to fail than the drive of wanting to succeed.

• 1:58:40Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that like, success coaches will tell you that's completely the wrong psychology?

• 1:58:48Speaker 02

  Joe, I think the world has just heard me say that out loud for the first time. But, but it's true.

• 1:58:52Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's so fascinating.

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  The fear of failure drives me more than the, than the greed or whatever it is.

• 1:59:02Joe Rogan?

  Well, ultimately, that's probably a more healthy approach, now that I'm thinking about it. Because like, the fear.

• 1:59:08Speaker 02

  I'm not ambitious, for example. You know? I just want to stay alive, Joe. I want the company to thrive, you know? I want us to make an impact.

• 1:59:18Joe Rogan?

  That's interesting.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Joe Rogan?

  Well, maybe that's why you're so humble. That's what, maybe that's what keeps you grounded. You know, because with the kind of spectacular success the company's achieved, it would be easy to get a big head.

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:59:30Joe Rogan?

  Right? But isn't that interesting? It's like, if you were the guy that your main focus is just success, you probably would go, well, made it, nailed it, I'm the man.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  Drop the mic.

• 1:59:44Joe Rogan?

  Instead, you wake up, you're like, God, we can't fuck this up.

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  No, exactly. Every morning, every morning, no, every moment.

• 1:59:50Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  Before I go to bed.

• 1:59:53Joe Rogan?

  Well, listen, if I was a major investor in your company, that's why I'd want running it. I'd want a guy who's like terrified of...

• 1:59:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's what I work, that's why I work seven days a week, every moment I'm awake.

• 2:00:06Joe Rogan?

  You work every moment you're awake?

• 2:00:07Speaker 02

  Every moment I'm awake.

• 2:00:08Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:00:09Speaker 02

  I'm thinking about solving a problem, I'm thinking about...

• 2:00:13Joe Rogan?

  How long can you keep this up?

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  I don't know, but so far, it could be next week.

• 2:00:18Joe Rogan?

  Sounds exhausting.

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  It is exhausting.

• 2:00:21Joe Rogan?

  It sounds completely exhausting.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Always in a state of anxiety.

• 2:00:25Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Always in a state of anxiety.

• 2:00:28Joe Rogan?

  Well, kudos to you for admitting that. I think that's important for a lot of people to hear. Because, you know, there's probably some young people out there that are in a similar position to where you were when you were starting out, that just feel like, oh, those people that have made it, they're just smarter than me and they had more opportunities than me and it's just like, it was handed to them or they're just in the right place at the right time and...

• 2:00:54Speaker 02

  Joe, I just described to you somebody who didn't know what was going on. Actually did it wrong.

• 2:00:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the ultimate diving catch like two or three times.

• 2:01:03Joe Rogan?

  Crazy.

• 2:01:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Joe Rogan?

  The ultimate diving catch is the perfect way to put it. You know, it's just like the edge of your glove.

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  It probably bounced off of somebody's helmet and landed at the edge of...

• 2:01:18Joe Rogan?

  God, that's incredible. It's incredible, but it's also, it's really cool that you have this perspective, that you look at it that way. Because you know, a lot of people that have delusions of grandeur, they have, you know.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  And their rewriting of history oftentimes had them somehow extraordinarily smart, and they were geniuses, and they knew all along, and they were, they were spot on. The business plan was exactly what they thought.

• 2:01:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:50Speaker 02

  They destroyed the competition, and, you know, and they emerged victorious.

• 2:01:57Joe Rogan?

  Meanwhile, you're like, "I'm scared every day."

• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:02:03Joe Rogan?

  It's so funny. Oh, my God, that's amazing.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  It's so true, though.

• 2:02:07Joe Rogan?

  It's amazing.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  It's so true.

• 2:02:08Joe Rogan?

  It's amazing.

• 2:02:09Speaker 02

  Well, but I, I think there's nothing inconsistent with being a leader and being vulnerable. You know, I, the company doesn't need me to be a genius right all along, right all the time, absolutely certain about what I'm trying to do and what I'm doing. The, the company doesn't need that. The company wants me to succeed. You know, the thing that, and we started out today talking about President Trump, and I was about to say something. And, listen, he is my president, he is our president. We should all, and we're talking about, just because it's President Trump, we all want him to be wrong.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  I think the United States, we all have to realize, he is our president, we want him to succeed.

• 2:02:56Joe Rogan?

  No matter who's president, we should have that attitude.

• 2:02:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:02:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:59Speaker 02

  We want him to succeed. We need to help him succeed, because it helps everybody, all of us succeed.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  And...

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  I'm lucky that I work in a company where I have forty thousand people who wants me to succeed. They want me to succeed and I can tell. And they're all, every single day to help me overcome these challenges. Trying to realize, realize what I described to be our strategy, doing their best. And if it's somehow wrong or not perfectly right, to tell me so that we could pivot. And the more vulnerable we are as a leader, the more able other people are able to tell you. You know, that Jensen, that's not exactly right, or

• 2:03:46Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  Have you considered this information, or? And the more vulnerable we are, the more able we're actually able to pivot. If we put ourselves into this superhuman capability, then it's hard for us to pivot strategy.

• 2:04:01Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:04:01Speaker 02

  Because we were supposed to be right all along. And so if you're always right, how can you possibly pivot? Because pivoting requires you to be wrong. And so I've got no trouble with being wrong. I just have to make sure that I stay alert, that I reason about things from first principles all the time. Always break things down to first principles, understand why it's happening. Reassess continuously. The reassessing continuously is kind of partly what causes continuous anxiety. You know, because you're asking yourself, were you wrong yesterday? Are you still right? Is this the same? Has that changed? Has that conditioned? Is that worse than you thought?

• 2:04:42Joe Rogan?

  But God, that mindset is perfect for your business, though. Because this business is ever-changing.

• 2:04:47Speaker 02

  All the time. I've got competition coming from every direction.

• 2:04:50Joe Rogan?

  So much of it is kind of up in the air. Phew.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  And you have to invent a future where a hundred variables are included. And there's no way you could be right on all of them. And so you have to be, you have to surf.

• 2:05:07Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:05:08Speaker 02

  You have to surf.

• 2:05:09Joe Rogan?

  That's a good way to put it. You have to surf.

• 2:05:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:11Joe Rogan?

  You're surfing waves of technology and innovation.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  That's right. You can't predict the waves. You gotta deal with the ones you have.

• 2:05:18Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  And, but skill matters. And I've been doing this for thirty, I'm the longest-running tech CEO in the world.

• 2:05:25Joe Rogan?

  Is that true? Congratulations. That's amazing.

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  And, you know, people ask me how, just one, don't get fired.

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  I'll stop a short no heartbeat.

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  And then two, don't get bored. Yeah.

• 2:05:41Joe Rogan?

  Well, how do you maintain your enthusiasm?

• 2:05:47Speaker 02

  The honest truth is, it's not always enthusiasm. It's, you know, sometimes it's enthusiasm. Sometimes it's just good old fashioned fear. And then sometimes, you know, a healthy dose of frustration. You know, it's.

• 2:06:00Joe Rogan?

  Whatever keeps you moving.

• 2:06:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, just all the emotions. I think, you know, CEOs, we have all the emotions, right? You know, and so probably, probably

• 2:06:12Speaker 02

  jacked up to the maximum because you're, you're kind of feeling it on behalf of the whole company. I'm feeling it on behalf of everybody at the same time. And it kind of, you know, encapsulates into, into somebody. And so I have to be mindful of the past. I have to be mindful of the present. I've got to be mindful of the future. And, um, you know, it can't, it's not without emotion. It's not just, it's, it's not just a job. Let's just put it that way.

• 2:06:40Joe Rogan?

  Hmm, that doesn't seem like it at all. I would imagine one of the more difficult aspects of your job currently, now that the company is massively successful, is anticipating where technology is headed and where the applications are going to be.

• 2:06:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:55Joe Rogan?

  So how do you try to map that out?

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, there, there, um, there, there's a whole bunch of ways. And, and it takes, it takes, um,

• 2:07:09Speaker 02

  takes a whole bunch of things, but let me just start.

• 2:07:12Speaker 02

  You, you have to be surrounded by amazing people. And Nvidia is now, you know, if you look at, look at, look at, um, the large tech companies in the world today, most of them have a business in advertising or social media or, you know, content distribution. And at the core of it is really fundamental computer science.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  And so the company's business is not computers. The company's business is not technology. Technology drives the company. Nvidia is the only company in the world that's large, whose only business is technology. We only build tech, we don't advertise. The only way that we make money is to create amazing technology and sell it. And so.

• 2:08:01Speaker 02

  To be Nvidia today, the number one thing is you're surrounded by the finest computer scientists in the world. And that's my gift. My gift is that we've created a company's culture, a condition by which the world's greatest computer scientists want to be part of it. Because they get to do their life's work and create the next thing. Because that's what they want to do. Because maybe they're not, they don't want to be in service of another business. They want to be in service of the technology itself. And we're the largest form of its kind in the history of the world.

• 2:08:37Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:08:38Speaker 02

  I know, it's pretty amazing.

• 2:08:39Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  And so, one, you know, we have got a great condition, we have a great culture, we have great people. And then now, now the question is, how do you systematically be able to see the future, stay alert of it, and reduce the likelihood of missing something or being wrong? And so, there's a lot of different ways you could do that. For example, we have great partnerships, we have fundamental research, we have a great research lab, one of the largest industrial research labs in the world today. And we partner with a whole bunch of universities and other scientists.

• 2:09:25Speaker 02

  We do a lot of open collaboration. And so, I'm constantly working with researchers outside the company. We have the benefit of having amazing customers. And so, I have the benefit of working with Elon and, you know, and others in the industry. And we have the benefit of being the only pure-play technology company that can serve consumer internet, industrial manufacturing, scientific computing, healthcare, financial services, all the industries that we're in, they're all signals to me. And so, they all have mathematicians and scientists.

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  And so, because I have the benefit now of a radar system, that is the most broad of any company in the world, working across every single industry, from agriculture to energy.

• 2:10:22Speaker 02

  To video games. And so the ability for us to have this vantage point. One, doing fundamental research ourselves. And then, two, working with all the great researchers, working with all the great industries. The feedback system is incredible. And then finally, you just have to have a culture of staying super alert. There's no easy way of being alert, except for paying attention. I haven't found a single way of being able to stay alert without paying attention. And so, you know, I probably read several thousand emails a day.

• 2:11:00Speaker 02

  How? How do you have the time for that? I wake up early. This morning, I was up at four o'clock. How much do you sleep?

• 2:11:08Speaker 02

  Six, seven, six, seven hours. Yeah. And then you're up at four, read emails for a few hours before you get going? That's right, yeah. Wow. Every day? Every single day. Not one day missed.

• 2:11:24Speaker 02

  Including Thanksgiving, Christmas. Do you ever take a vacation?

• 2:11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they're, um, my definition of a vacation is when I'm with my family. And so if I'm with my family, I'm very happy. I don't care where we are. And you don't work then? Or you work a little? No, no, I work a lot.

• 2:11:43Speaker 02

  Even like if you go on a trip somewhere, you're still working? Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Wow. Every day? Every day. But my kids work every day. You make me tired just saying this. My kids work every day.

• 2:11:56Speaker 02

  Both of my kids work in video. They work every day. Wow. Yeah, I'm very lucky. Wow. Yeah. It's brutal now because, you know, it's just me working every day. Now we have three people working every day, and they want to work with me every day. And so it's, it's a lot of work.

• 2:12:12Joe Rogan?

  Well, you've obviously imparted that ethic into them.

• 2:12:16Speaker 02

  They work incredibly hard.

• 2:12:18Joe Rogan?

  I mean, there's no, that's.

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  But my parents work incredibly hard.

• 2:12:22Joe Rogan?

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• 2:13:01Joe Rogan?

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• 2:14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, I was born with the work gene, the suffering gene.

• 2:14:28Joe Rogan?

  Well, listen, man, it has paid off. What a crazy story. It was just, it's really an amazing origin story. It really, I mean, it has to be kind of surreal to be in the position that you're in now, when you look back at how many times that it could have fallen apart and humble beginnings.

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  But Joe, this is, it's a great country. And I'm an immigrant. My parents sent my older brother and I here first. We're in, we're in Thailand. I was born in Taiwan, but my dad had a job in Thailand. He was a chemical and instrumentation engineer, incredible engineer. And his job was to go start an oil refinery. And so we moved to Thailand, lived in Bangkok. And in 19, I guess, 1973, 1974 timeframe, you know how Thailand, every so often, they would just have a coup? You know, the military would have an uprising.

• 2:15:29Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, one day, there were tanks and soldiers in the streets. And my parents thought, you know, probably isn't safe for the kids to be here. And so they contacted my uncle. My uncle lives in Tacoma, Washington. And we had never met him. And my parents sent us to him.

• 2:15:48Joe Rogan?

  How old were you?

• 2:15:50Speaker 02

  I was about to turn nine. And my older brother almost turned 11. And so the two of us came to the United States. And we stayed in, with our uncle for a little bit, while he looked for a school for us. And my parents didn't have very much money. And they'd never been to the United States. My father was, I'll tell you that story in a second. And, and so my, my uncle found a school that would accept foreign students and affordable enough for my parents.

• 2:16:29Speaker 02

  And that school turned out to have been in Oneida, Kentucky. Clark County, Kentucky. The epicenter of the opio crisis today. Coal country. Clark County, Kentucky is, was the poorest county in America when I showed up. It is the poorest county in America today. And so we went to the school. It's a great school. Oneida Baptist Institute. In a town of a few hundred. I think it was 600 at the time that we showed up. No traffic light. And I think it's 600 today.

• 2:17:12Speaker 02

  It's kind of amazing feat, actually. The ability to hold your population for, when it's 600 people, is quite a magic, quite a magical thing, however they did it. And, and so the school had a mission of being an open school for any children who would like to come. And what that basically means is that if you're a troubled student, if you have a troubled family, if you're, you know, whatever your background, you're welcome to come to Oneida Baptist Institute,

• 2:17:57Speaker 02

  including kids from international who would like to stay there.

• 2:18:02Joe Rogan?

  Did you speak English at the time?

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah. And so we showed up. And my first, my first thought was, gosh, there are a lot of cigarette butts on the ground. 100% of the kids smoked. So right away, you know, this is not a normal school.

• 2:18:29Joe Rogan?

  Nine-year-olds?

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  No, I was the youngest kid.

• 2:18:32Joe Rogan?

  Okay. 11-year-olds.

• 2:18:33Speaker 02

  My roommate was 17 years old.

• 2:18:36Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, he'd just turned 17. And he was jacked. And, and

• 2:18:47Speaker 02

  I don't know where he is now. I know his name, but I don't know where he is now. But anyways, that night, we got, and the second thing I noticed when you walk into the, into your dorm room, is there are no drawers and no closet doors. Just like a prison. And there are no locks, so that people could check, check up on you. And so I go into my room, and he's seventeen, and, you know, get ready for, for bed. And he had all this tape all over his body.

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  And it turned out, he was in a knife fight, and he's been stabbed all over his body, and these were just fresh wounds. Whoa. And the other kids were hurt much worse. And so he was my roommate, the toughest kid in school, and I was the youngest kid in school. It was a, it was a junior high, but they took me anyways, because if I walked about a mile across the Kentucky River, the swing bridge, the other side is a middle school that I could go to. And then I can go to that school, and I come back, and then I stay in the dorm.

• 2:20:11Speaker 02

  And so basically, Oneida Baptist Institute was my dorm when I went to this other, other school. My older brother went, went to, went to the junior high. And so we were there for a couple of years. Every kid had, every kid had chores. My older brother's chore was to work in the tobacco farm, you know, so tobacco, they raised tobacco so that they could raise some extra money for the school, kind of like a penitentiary. Wow. And my job was just to clean the dorm. And so I, I was nine years old, I was cleaning toilets and, for a dorm of a hundred, hundred boys, I cleaned more bathrooms than anybody. And I just wish that everybody was a little bit more careful. [laughing]

• 2:21:00Speaker 02

  But anyways, I was the youngest kid in school. The, my memories of it was really good. Um, but it was a pretty, it was a tough town.

• 2:21:08Joe Rogan?

  Sounds like it.

• 2:21:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, town kids, they all carried, everybody had knives.

• 2:21:12Joe Rogan?

  Oof.

• 2:21:12Speaker 02

  Everybody had knives. Everybody smoked. Everybody had a Zippo lighter. I smoked for a week.

• 2:21:19Joe Rogan?

  Did you?

• 2:21:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 2:21:20Joe Rogan?

  How old were you?

• 2:21:21Speaker 02

  I was nine, yeah.

• 2:21:22Joe Rogan?

  When you nine, you're nine, you tried smoking?

• 2:21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got myself a pack of cigarettes, everybody else did.

• 2:21:27Joe Rogan?

  Did you get sick?

• 2:21:28Speaker 02

  No, I got used to it. You know, and I learned how to blow, blow, uh, smoke rings and, you know.

• 2:21:36Speaker 02

  You know, breathe out of my nose, you know, take it in out of my, through my nose. There was a color, all the different things that you learned. Yeah.

• 2:21:44Joe Rogan?

  At nine?

• 2:21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:45Joe Rogan?

  Wow, you just did it to fit in or it looked cool?

• 2:21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, because everybody else did it.

• 2:21:49Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and then I, I did it for a couple of weeks, I guess. And I just rather have, I had a quarter, you know? I had a quarter a month or something like that.

• 2:22:02Speaker 02

  I just rather buy popsicles and fudge sickles with it. I was nine, you know?

• 2:22:06Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:22:07Speaker 02

  I chose, I chose the, the better path.

• 2:22:10Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:22:11Speaker 02

  That was our school. And then my parents came to the United States two years later. And, um, we met him in Tacoma, Washington.

• 2:22:19Joe Rogan?

  That's wild.

• 2:22:21Speaker 02

  It, it was a really crazy experience.

• 2:22:23Joe Rogan?

  What a strange formative experience.

• 2:22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, tough kids.

• 2:22:28Joe Rogan?

  Thailand to one of the poorest places in America, where if not the poorest. As a nine-year-old.

• 2:22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was my first experience.

• 2:22:39Joe Rogan?

  By yourself, with your brother. Wow.

• 2:22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, I, I used to, and what breaks my heart, probably the only thing that really breaks my heart of,

• 2:22:50Speaker 02

  about that experience was. So.

• 2:22:55Speaker 02

  We didn't have enough money to make, you know, international phone calls every week. And so my parents gave us this tape deck. This Iowa tape deck. And a tape. And so every month, we would sit in front of that tape deck and my older brother Jeff and I.

• 2:23:17Speaker 02

  The two of us would just tell them what we did.

• 2:23:21Speaker 02

  The whole month.

• 2:23:22Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:23:24Speaker 02

  And we would send that tape by mail.

• 2:23:27Speaker 02

  And my parents would take that tape. And record back on top of it and send it back to us.

• 2:23:35Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:23:35Speaker 02

  Could you imagine if for two years?

• 2:23:38Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:23:38Speaker 02

  Is that tape still existed? Of these two kids just describing their first experience with United States? Like, I remember telling my parents.

• 2:23:49Speaker 02

  That, that I joined the swim team. And.

• 2:23:58Speaker 02

  My roommate was really buff and so every day we spent a lot of time in the, in the gym. And so, every night, hundred pushups, hundred situps, every day in the gym. So I was nine years old. I was getting, I was pretty buff.

• 2:24:12Speaker 02

  And I'm pretty fit and.

• 2:24:17Speaker 02

  And so I joined the soccer team. I joined the swim team because. If you join the team, they take you to meats and then afterwards you get to go to a nice restaurant. And that nice restaurant was McDonald's.

• 2:24:29Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:24:30Speaker 02

  And, and I recorded this thing. I said, Mom and Dad, we went to the most amazing restaurant today. This whole place is lit up. It's like the future. And the food comes in a box.

• 2:24:49Speaker 02

  And the food is incredible. The hamburger is incredible. It was McDonald's. But anyhow, it, wouldn't it be amazing?

• 2:24:56Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:24:57Speaker 02

  Two years.

• 2:24:58Joe Rogan?

  Recording?

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, two years. Yeah.

• 2:25:00Joe Rogan?

  What a crazy connection to your parents too, just sending a tape and them sending you one back. And it's the only way you're communicating for two years.

• 2:25:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:10Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I, I, my parents are incredible, actually. They're just, they're, they grew up really poor. And when they came to United States, they had almost no money.

• 2:25:24Speaker 02

  Probably one of the most.

• 2:25:27Speaker 02

  Impactful memories I have is, is we, they came and we were, we were staying in a, in a, in a apartment complex.

• 2:25:39Speaker 02

  And they had, they had just rent back in the, I guess people still do rent, rent a bunch of furniture.

• 2:25:47Speaker 02

  And we were messing around.

• 2:25:54Speaker 02

  And we bumped into the coffee table and crushed it. It was made out of particle wood and we crushed it.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  And I just still remember the look on my mom's face, you know, because they didn't have any money and she didn't know how she was gonna pay it back. And, but anyhow, that's, that kinda tells you how hard it was for them to come here. But they, they left everything behind and all they had was their suitcase and the money they had in their pocket when they came to the United States.

• 2:26:25Joe Rogan?

  How old were they at the time?

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Pursue the American dream. They were in their 40s.

• 2:26:28Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, late, late 30s. Pursue the American dream. This is, this is the American dream. I'm the first generation of the American dream.

• 2:26:37Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hard not to love this country.

• 2:26:41Joe Rogan?

  That's.

• 2:26:41Speaker 02

  It's, it's hard not to be romantic about this country.

• 2:26:43Joe Rogan?

  That is a romantic story. That's an amazing story.

• 2:26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and my dad found his job literally in the newspaper, you know, the ads. And he calls people, got a job.

• 2:26:57Joe Rogan?

  What did he do?

• 2:26:58Speaker 02

  Uh, he was a consulting engineer in a, in a consulting firm. And they helped people build oil refineries, paper mills and fabs. And that's what he did. He was, he, he's really good at factory design. Instrumentation engineer. And so he's, he's brilliant at that. And so he did that. And my mom worked as a maid and they found a way to raise us.

• 2:27:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:27:28Joe Rogan?

  That's an incredible story, Jensen.

• 2:27:30Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 2:27:31Joe Rogan?

  Every, all of it, from your childhood to the perils of Nvidia almost falling. It's really incredible, man.

• 2:27:40Speaker 02

  It's a great story, yeah. I've lived a great life.

• 2:27:43Joe Rogan?

  You really have, and it's a great story for other people to hear, too. It really is.

• 2:27:48Speaker 02

  You don't, you don't have to go to Ivy League schools to succeed.

• 2:27:54Speaker 02

  This country creates opportunities, has opportunities for all of us. You do have to strive.

• 2:28:01Speaker 02

  You have to claw your way here. Yeah.

• 2:28:04Joe Rogan?

  But if you put in the work, you can succeed.

• 2:28:07Speaker 02

  Nobody works harder.

• 2:28:08Joe Rogan?

  With a lot of luck and a lot of good decision making.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  And the good graces of others.

• 2:28:13Joe Rogan?

  Yes. That's really important.

• 2:28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you and I spoke about two, two people who are very dear to me. But the list goes on. The people, the people at Nvidia who have, have helped me.

• 2:28:28Speaker 02

  Many friends that are on the board.

• 2:28:31Speaker 02

  The decisions, you know, them giving me the opportunity, like when we were inventing this new computing approach. I tanked our stock price because we added this thing called CUDA to the chip. We had this big idea, we added this thing called CUDA to the chip. But nobody paid for it, but our cost doubled. And so we had this graphics chip company and we invented GPUs. We invented programmable shaders. We invented everything modern computer graphics.

• 2:29:00Speaker 02

  We invented real time ray tracing, that's why it went from GTX to RTX. We invented all this stuff, but every time we invented something.

• 2:29:11Speaker 02

  The market doesn't know how to appreciate it, but the cost went way up. And in the case of CUDA that enabled AI. The cost increased a lot. And, but I really, we really believed it. You know, and so if you believe in that future and you don't do anything about it, you're going to regret it for your life.

• 2:29:31Speaker 02

  And so we always, you know, I always tell the team, do you believe what, do we believe this or not? And if you believe it, and so grounded on first principles, not random, you know, hearsay. And we believe it, we've got to, we owe it to ourselves to go pursue it. If we're the right people to go do it, if it's really, really hard to do, it's worth doing, and we believe it, let's go pursue it. Well, we pursued it, we, we launched the product. Nobody knew, it was exactly like when I launched DGX1, and the entire audience was like, complete silence. When I launched CUDA, the audience was complete silence. No customer wanted it, nobody asked for it, nobody understood it, Nvidia was a public

• 2:30:16Speaker 02

  company.

• 2:30:17Joe Rogan?

  What year was this?

• 2:30:18Speaker 02

  This is, uh, uh, let's see, 2000 and, 2006, 20 years ago. 2005.

• 2:30:29Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:30:32Speaker 02

  Our stock prices went, poof. I think our valuation went down to like, two or three billion dollars.

• 2:30:40Joe Rogan?

  From?

• 2:30:41Speaker 02

  From about 12 or something like that. I crushed it.

• 2:30:47Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:30:48Speaker 02

  In a very bad way.

• 2:30:49Joe Rogan?

  What is it now, though?

• 2:30:52Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it's higher.

• 2:30:54Joe Rogan?

  Very humble of you.

• 2:30:58Speaker 02

  It's higher, but it changed the world.

• 2:31:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:01Speaker 02

  That invention changed the world.

• 2:31:02Joe Rogan?

  It's an incredible story, Johnson. It really is. Thank you.

• 2:31:09Speaker 02

  Like your story, it's incredible.

• 2:31:10Joe Rogan?

  My story's not as incredible. My story's more weird. You know? It's much more fortuitous and weird.

• 2:31:19Speaker 02

  Okay, what are the three milestones, that, most important milestones that led to here?

• 2:31:28Joe Rogan?

  That's a good question.

• 2:31:29Speaker 02

  Okay, what was step one?

• 2:31:31Joe Rogan?

  I think step one was seeing other people do it. Step one was in the initial days of podcasting, like in 2009 when I started podcasting and only been around for a couple of years.

• 2:31:46Joe Rogan?

  The first was Adam Curry, my good friend, who was the pod father. He invented podcasting. And then, you know, I remember Adam Carolla had a show because he had a radio show, his radio show got canceled. And so he decided to just do the same show, but do it on the internet. And that was pretty revolutionary. Nobody was doing that. And then there was the experiences that I had had doing different morning radio shows, like Opie and Anthony in particular. Because it was fun and we would just get together with a bunch of comedians. You know, I'd be on the show with like three or four other guys that I knew and it was always just look forward to it, which was just such a good time. And I said, God, I miss doing that. It's so fun to do that. I wish I could do something like that.

• 2:32:28Joe Rogan?

  And then I saw Tom Green set up. Tom Green had a setup in his house. And he essentially turned his entire house into a television studio. And he did an internet show from his living room. He had servers in his house and cables everywhere. He had to step over cables. This is like 2007. I'm like, Tom, this is nuts. Like this is. And I'm like, you gotta figure out a way to make money from this.

• 2:32:48Speaker 02

  I wish everybody, I wish everybody in internet could see your setup. It's nuts. I just want to let you guys know that.

• 2:32:55Speaker 02

  It's not just this.

• 2:32:57Joe Rogan?

  So that was the, the beginning of it is just seeing other people do it and then saying, all right, let's just try it. And then so the beginning days, we just did it on a laptop. Had a laptop with a webcam and just messed around, had a bunch of comedians come in and we were just talking. Joke around and I did it like once a week and then I started doing it twice a week. And then all of a sudden I was doing it for a year and then I was doing it for two years. Then it was like, oh, it's starting to get a lot of viewers. A lot of listeners, you know, and then I just kept doing it. That's all it is. I just kept doing it because I enjoyed doing it.

• 2:33:31Speaker 02

  Was there any setback?

• 2:33:33Joe Rogan?

  No. No, there's never really a setback.

• 2:33:35Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:33:35Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 2:33:36Speaker 02

  It must have been.

• 2:33:36Joe Rogan?

  It's not the same kind of story.

• 2:33:38Speaker 02

  You're just resilient or you're just tough.

• 2:33:41Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no. It wasn't tough or hard. It was just interesting. So I just, it, the.

• 2:33:47Speaker 02

  You were never once punched in the face.

• 2:33:48Joe Rogan?

  No, not in the show. No, not really. Not, not doing the show.

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  You never did something that, that.

• 2:33:55Speaker 02

  Big blowback.

• 2:33:56Joe Rogan?

  Nope. Not really. No, it all just kept growing. It kept growing and the thing stayed the same from the beginning to now. And the thing is, I enjoy talking to people. I've always enjoyed talking to interesting people.

• 2:34:10Speaker 02

  I could even tell just when we walked in, the way you interacted with everybody, not just me. Yeah, that's cool.

• 2:34:16Joe Rogan?

  People are cool.

• 2:34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 2:34:18Joe Rogan?

  You know, I, I, it's a, an amazing gift to be able to have so many conversations with so many interesting people because it changes the way you see the world, because you see the world through so many different people's eyes. And you have so many different people have different perspectives and different opinions and different philosophies and different life stories and, you know, it's an incredibly enriching and educating experience having so many conversations with so many amazing people. And that's all I started doing and that's all I do now. Even now, when I book the show, I do it on my phone and I basically go through this giant list of emails

• 2:35:02Joe Rogan?

  of all the people that want to be on the show or the request to be on the show. And then I factor in another list that I have of people that I would like to get on the show that I'm interested in. And I just map it out and that's it. And I go, ooh, I'd like to talk to him.

• 2:35:15Speaker 02

  If it wasn't because of President Trump, I wouldn't have been bumped up on that list.

• 2:35:19Joe Rogan?

  No, I wanted to talk to you already. I, I just think, you know, what you're doing is very fascinating. I mean, how would I not want to talk to you? And then today it proved to be absolutely the right decision.

• 2:35:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know, listen, it's, it's strange to be an immigrant one day, going to Anita Baptist Institute with, with the students that were there. And then here, Nvidia is one of the most consequential companies in the history of companies. It is a crazy story.

• 2:35:52Joe Rogan?

  It has to be.

• 2:35:53Speaker 02

  That journey is, and it's very humbling and, and I'm very grateful.

• 2:35:59Joe Rogan?

  It's pretty amazing, man.

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  Surrounded by amazing people.

• 2:36:02Joe Rogan?

  You're very fortunate and you've also, you seem very happy and you seem like you're 100% on the right path in this life.

• 2:36:08Speaker 02

  You know, everybody says you must love your job, not every day.

• 2:36:14Joe Rogan?

  That's not, that's part of the beauty of everything, is that there's ups and downs.

• 2:36:19Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:36:19Joe Rogan?

  It's never just like this giant dopamine high.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  We leave, we leave this impression, here's, here's an impression I don't think is healthy. We, people who are successful leave the impression often that, that our job gives us great joy. I think largely it does, that our jobs, we're passionate of our work.

• 2:36:45Speaker 02

  And that passion relates to, it's just so much fun. I think it largely is. But it, it distracts from, in fact, a lot of success comes from really, really hard work.

• 2:37:00Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:37:01Speaker 02

  There's long periods of suffering and loneliness and uncertainty and fear and embarrassment and humiliation, all of the feelings that we most not love. That creating something from the ground up, and Elon will tell you something similar, very difficult to invent, invent something new.

• 2:37:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:30Speaker 02

  And people, people don't believe you all the time, you're humiliated often, disbelieved most of the time. And so, so people forget that part of success and, and I, I don't think it's health, I think it's, it's good that we pass that forward and let people know that, that it's just part of the journey.

• 2:37:50Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:37:51Speaker 02

  The suffering is part of the journey.

• 2:37:53Joe Rogan?

  You will appreciate it so mu, these horrible feelings that you have when things are not going so well, you will appreciate it so much more when they do go well.

• 2:38:01Speaker 02

  Deeply grateful.

• 2:38:02Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, deep, deep pride, incredible pride, incredible, incredible gratefulness and, and surely incredible memories.

• 2:38:12Joe Rogan?

  Absolutely. Jensen, thank you so much for being here, this was really fun, I really enjoyed it and your story is just absolutely incredible and very inspirational and, and I, you know, I think it really is the American dream.

• 2:38:25Speaker 02

  It is the American dream.

• 2:38:26Joe Rogan?

  It really is. Thank you so much.

• 2:38:28Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jim.

• 2:38:28Joe Rogan?

  All right. Bye, everybody.

• 2:38:45Speaker 00

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