Why the Tech Giant Nvidia May Own the Future. Plus, Joshua Rothman on Taking A.I Seriously

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stephen Witt on the microchip maker’s rise, and the geopolitical challenges it faces. And, Rothman thinks people outside the tech world should help shape the impact of A.I.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Listener supported, WNYC Studios.
0:10.8	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:19.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:23.4	Invidia is a tech colossus.
0:26.2	It's as potentially important to the way we live our lives in the near future as Apple or Google.
0:32.6	Maybe even more so.
0:34.4	Invidia makes microchips.
0:36.6	In fact, it's all but cornered the market on the chips that are
0:39.6	essential for the use of AI, for artificial intelligence systems like chat GPT. And just recently,
0:46.4	it was rated the most valuable company ever. But this is not primarily a business story. It's a
0:53.7	story about the United States and China,
0:55.8	about who exactly is building the technology that shapes the future, our future.
1:02.3	About a year ago, journalist Stephen Witt wrote a stunning portrait in the New Yorker of Invidia
1:07.1	and its co-founder Jensen Huang.
1:10.2	Witt's new book on the subject is called The Thinking
1:13.5	Machine.
1:17.9	Stephen, in all the years we've been doing this show, I don't think we've ever sat down to talk
1:22.9	about a microchip company and the CEO of that microchip company.
1:28.5	And yet, invidia is incredibly important to all of our futures in somewhere or another.
1:35.7	Explain what Nvidia is and why it's so important.
1:39.6	When you interact with a system like ChatGPT,
1:43.0	like say everyone's rendering their image right now as Studio Ghibli kind of anime, it takes your request and it sends it back through a giant broadband data pipe to a huge data center.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 5 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.