“I don’t know what career is going to be the most successful but…”: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s advice to parents raising kids in the AI era |

“I don’t know what career is going to be the most successful but…”: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s advice to parents raising kids in the AI eraAs artificial intelligence becomes part of everyday life, parents face a new question: what should children learn today when it is difficult to know which careers will matter most in the future? NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang does not claim to have the answer to which career will be the most successful. Instead, when asked what young children should be doing and what they should study in school, Huang shared the advice he gives his own children. He replied, “Go to school and engage with AI.”

“Go to school”

Speaking to Anderson Cooper on CNN, Huang said he does not know which career will eventually lead to the best-paying job. But he strongly believes education will remain worthwhile. “Well, I don’t know what career is going to be the most successful. However, I can tell you this: I can tell you what I tell my kids. One, go to school,” Huang said. He also pushed back against the idea that the rise of AI could make traditional education unnecessary.“Anything that we do to scare kids from believing that they need to go to school anymore, I think is a disservice to society,” he said. For Huang, education is not only about preparing children for a particular profession. He said going to school and getting educated can broaden a person’s understanding of the world. “When you go to school, when you get educated, it elevates your civility, elevates your understanding of the world, and works out bias and prejudice,” he said. “The more knowledge you have, the more informed you are, the better it’s going to be.”Huang repeated his point that children should continue their education even if nobody can say with certainty which qualification or career will offer the highest salary in the future. “One, go to school. I’m not exactly sure what education is going to lead to the best-paying job, but I’m pretty sure that your education is going to be worthwhile,” he said.

His second message: ‘Engage AI’

An old photo of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with his wife and his children, Madison and Spencer.

Huang’s second piece of advice is directly connected to the technology that has changed the conversation around children’s future careers. “Number two, engage AI,” he said. Rather than encouraging children to stay away from AI because it could change the workplace, Huang said children should learn how to use it. “The two things that I tell my kids: engage AI, learn what it can do, don’t give up on it, and make it work for you,” he said. He sees AI as something children can use to expand what they are capable of doing. “Help it expand your capabilities so that you could be even more ambitious. Your aspirations could be even greater,” Huang said.

What Huang wants parents to avoid telling children

Photo: Canva

Huang also had a message for parents who may be worried about the future and what AI could mean for their children’s ambitions. “That’s what I would tell the kids. That’s precisely what I’ve told my kids. I would tell your kids exactly the same thing,” he said. He said he would avoid saying anything that could make children feel that their efforts will no longer matter because of AI. “I would avoid doing anything that would discourage them from wanting to have a greater future, believing that somehow their endeavors will no longer matter, that somehow going to school is a waste of their time and money,” Huang said. He was particularly emphatic about this point, describing such messages as “horrible, horrible, absolutely horrible.”As Huang put it, he does not know which career will be the most successful. But he believes children should continue learning, understand the world around them and learn what AI can do so they can use it to expand their own capabilities rather than assume that AI will make their efforts irrelevant.