Jensen's Huang!
Disclaimer:
NerdNews does not usually concern itself with mere matters of the flesh.
A cerebral(ish) popular science outlet, focussing on AI, mathematics, tech and general geekery, I don’t have time for click-baity content or material that doesn’t go to the core purpose of spreading the NerdNews.
Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater: sad but none of my business.
Russell Brand: what a terrible person. Absolutely deserving of the column inches he is receiving. But it’s not NerdNews fodder.
This, however, is different.
International affairs.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an extramarital affair.
That’s a personal matter and, as he describes it;
“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” — Jensen Huang.
But Jensen, as I just mentioned, is the CEO of Nvidia.
The company at the very heart of the tech-o-ecosystem that is powering the AI revolution. Nvidia’s chips are in the highest possible demand and are not available everywhere. In particular, US export restrictions prevent many of their most powerful chips from being sold to China without government approval.
And that’s where this affair jumps across from ‘none of our business’ to ‘perhaps all of our business’.
You see, while he mentioned no names, Jensen’s strongly suspected paramour was no less than one Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le.
The ‘Huang’ is a coincidence, no connection with Jensen’s family. That is not important.
What is important is that Alice Huang is a Chinese business executive whom US intelligence reportedly believes was recruited to spy for Beijing.
What is certain is that Alice worked for Megaspeed, a major Nvidia customer suspected of helping China obtain advanced AI chips despite stringent US export restrictions.
You won’t be shocked to know that China denies any impropriety.
President Trump has leapt to Jensen’s defense, but, surprise, surprise, might not have really helped all that much.
“I haven't heard he's done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody, but, you know, so does, so does everybody else.” — Donald J Trump, US President, to reporters.
Nvidia has launched an independent investigation. Its board says it has no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised and they retain full confidence ain jensen as the top dog - albeit it a bit of a dirty dog, if you know what I’m saying. Again, apologies - couldn’t resist.
But given Nvidia’s central role in all of AI computing, you can understand why some people are claiming potential international security implications.
Spill the tea?
Gary Marcus is a cognitive scientist, MIT PhD and professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University. He founded an AI company acquired by Uber, has published research in Nature and Science, and is a prominent sceptic of AI industry claims.
His Substack is ‘Marcus on AI’ and he summarises where it is at here.
“The combination of money, power, sex, AI, international politics, and an incoming congress eager to push back against the tech titans is about to explode in ways none of us could have imagined just a couple weeks ago.” — Gary Marcus, Marcus on AI.
He has followed up with Jensen is Cooked.
Now Gary is an outspoken critic of much of the modern LLM surge and OpenAI and Nvidia in particular. So some people would argue that he is going to go harder here than might be warranted.
KBS Sidhu gives a, perhaps, more measured analysis here. But is should be noted that this was posted before Huang’s admissions made on Monday Australian time.
Who knows where this is going to land.
But against the almost melodramatic last couple of months in the world of AI, replete with rogue agent swarms, unprecedented mathematical breakthroughs and 2 trillion dollar stock market pushes, it’s almost as though the one thing we were missing was an international espionage fuelled sex scandal!
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