Texas Emerges as Nvidia's New Proving Ground for AI Manufacturing
US chip designer Nvidia and optical technology company Coherent are investing in a new factory in Sherman, Texas, as part of a broader push to expand the AI supply chain in the United States. The project also highlights a growing debate over whether AI will create jobs or replace workers.
REPORTER:
US chip designer Nvidia is betting on AI to revive American manufacturing. That test might come with one factory in a small city in northern Texas.
REPORTER:
Nvidia and optical technology company Coherent are investing two billion US dollars in a factory in the city of Sherman. It will produce key components to link AI chips, helping power the massive AI systems behind chatbots and other advanced applications.
REPORTER:
In an interview this week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the present technology boom also requires society to adapt. He compares the AI revolution to the arrival of the automobile, arguing that innovation AND regulation must develop together.
Jensen Huang (CEO, NVIDIA):
When automobiles came, we needed to create new social norms. And so all of that combination of social norms, regulations, safer cars, seatbelts, and all the technology that comes along with it, it's all of it at the same time. So I think you have to deal with regulation technology.
REPORTER:
Huang made the case as AI faces growing resistance. The factory represents a fundamental test: Whether AI will be a source of job creation, as Huang says, OR a technology that replaces workers, as it becomes possible to analyze data, run an assembly line, or even drive an automobile without much help from humans.
