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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Trump Fed Up with Putin as Russian Attacks Continue; Trump Signs His Big, Beautiful Bill. Interview With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired July 13, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:43]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, has Donald Trump finally reached the end of his rope with Vladimir Putin?

After many years of expressing warmth and admiration for the Russian leader --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've always had a good relationship with Putin.

ZAKARIA: Trump had this to say on Tuesday.

TRUMP: We get a lot of bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED) thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth.

ZAKARIA: What could this mean for the future of the war in Ukraine? We'll explore.

Also, President Trump's big, beautiful bill promises to hurt many of his own supporters in a very ugly way. How will that work economically and politically? I'll talk to the "FT's" Rana Foroohar.

Then the main event. I sit down with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia. On Wednesday, Nvidia became the world's first $4 trillion company. Much of that value comes from its chips, which form the backbone of artificial intelligence.

We will talk about A.I., relations between the U.S. and China, and what this technological revolution means for you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

If a ceasefire takes hold in Gaza, it will be a case of better late than never. But it's worth taking stock of the devastation caused by Israel's massive and continuing response to the admittedly horrific October 7th attacks, during which about 1,200 were killed and another 251 taken hostage.

The Palestinian death toll, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas, is over 57,000. An essay published in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz," citing a well-regarded international scholar, estimates that the real number is much higher, closer to 100,000. And once you include deaths from starvation and disease, it might even surpass that number.

At around five percent of the population, this may be the worst level of wartime death in the 21st century. This analysis has been disputed, but even the critique notes that the death toll is staggeringly high. Gaza has mostly been reduced to rubble, and, according to the U.N., of the population of around 2.1 million, 1.9 million people have been displaced during the war.

Nothing can make right what has been done to these people. But there is one path forward that could give some meaning to their misery. A Palestinian state. It is not as unimaginable as it might seem. The central reality to understand is that a Palestinian state will only come into being if Israel embraces its founding. The idea that Israel can be forced into granting this concession to the Palestinians simply does not recognize the realities of power on the ground.

But circumstances today make it conceivable that Israel could move in this direction. Two outside leaders are key. First, President Trump, who is seen in Israel as the most pro-Israeli American leader in memory. He could use that political capital to urge Israel to give Palestinians political rights and statehood.

The second person with real leverage is Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. More than any other prize, Israel seeks normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia. MBS should insist that the price of peace is a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is often seen as the greatest obstacle to a Palestinian state, but he's now in an unusually strong position and could use it to make history.

Outside of Gaza, Israel's wars have succeeded beyond anyone's imagination. Hezbollah is decimated.

[10:05:02]

Syria's Assad regime is history. Iran is weaker than at any point in decades. Its nuclear program seriously degraded. And even in Gaza, Hamas is a shadow of its former self.

The next Israeli elections will take place in just over a year, and potentially even sooner. Imagine if Netanyahu went to the polls as the man who destroyed Hamas and Hezbollah, defanged Syria and Iran, and finally found a way to settle the Palestinian issue while keeping Israel secure, he could win the election without the extremist right- wing partners, who have insisted that the price on their support is no movement towards any Palestinian state. He alone may be able to convince Israelis that shocking the world with

a peaceful resolution with the Palestinians would keep Israel safe while keeping him in office. In his remarks at the White House, Netanyahu spoke of making peace with Israel's Palestinian neighbors and even spoke about a Palestinian state. He said it would not have all the attributes of a normal state, implying that Israel would retain certain powers relating to security. But that is surely the start of a negotiation that could bear fruit.

It's easy to make the pessimistic case. In the wake of October 7th, Israelis are deeply suspicious of any concessions to Palestinians. In the wake of the mass casualties in Gaza, Palestinians are unwilling to accept Israeli terms for statehood. The Israeli government has been brutal not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank, where since October 7th at least 18,000 Palestinians have been arrested.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, around 50,000 settlement units are on pace to be approved just in 2025, and Israeli settlers have engaged in violence against Palestinians at unprecedented levels. Ministers like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are trying to create conditions for either a permanent apartheid state or the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and possibly both.

But this is precisely why it is urgent to at least try to make a bid for another path forward. For those who feel that any Palestinian state that would emerge would only be a rump entity, it's worth noting that every time the Palestinians have walked away from a deal, the next one has been much worse.

In 1947, they could have accepted nearly half of the old Palestinian mandate. In 2000, the Camp David plan gave them about 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, most of which was proposed again by Ehud Olmert in 2008. Today, they will be lucky if they can get 70 percent of that land. When you are the weaker party. As time goes on, the deal gets worse. Better to take the best deal they can get now and use it to build a state that demonstrates success.

At the end of the day, there's only one man who can set this ball rolling. Donald Trump. And were he to succeed as someone who was criticized much of his chaotic and counterproductive foreign policy, I would not hesitate to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

On Wednesday night, Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of the war, bombarding the country with more than 700 drones and a dozen missiles. That attack came a day after Trump said he was very unhappy with Putin during a Cabinet meeting. It is just the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the two leaders, as Trump is outwardly losing patience with Putin. Trump is now considering additional sanctions on Moscow and has promised to make a major statement on Russia.

Joining me now is Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Alexander, welcome. What do you make of this extraordinary drone

attack? It seems to be coming at a time when Trump is urging restraint and caution. Is Putin openly defying Trump?

ALEXANDER GABUEV, DIRECTOR, CARNEGIE RUSSIA EURASIA CENTER: I think the impression in the Kremlin is that you need to stay on the good side of President Trump, massage his ego, praise him and tell how great he is, how grateful you as Russia are for his attempts to end this conflict on terms acceptable to Russia, and also how much this war is Biden's fault.

[10:10:05]

At the same time, so far, Russians have seen a lot of bark from the American side but no bite. Mr. Trump has not demonstrated ability or will to push Russia into peace negotiations and arrive to terms of peace acceptable to both the United States and Ukraine. With that, Mr. Putin believes that he can have his way and he can push and pursue his war aims and arrive at peace on his conditions, which means subjugation of Ukraine, breaking the line that connects Ukraine's self-defense effort with the Western military intelligence machine and defense industrial complex, and leaving rump state of Ukraine on trajectory of potential failure and definitely at the Kremlin's mercy going forward.

ZAKARIA: So his war goals, it seems to me, are to have a Ukraine that is a rump state. And because it is permanently under the threat of Russian invasion is going to be a basket case, right? Nobody will invest in a country where they worry about a Russian invasion. That's his goal.

GABUEV: I absolutely agree with you that's his goal. And for that cutting this lifeline that connects Ukrainian self-defense effort, its army, its intelligence machine, its defense production to the West, where a lot of critical intelligence that helps Ukrainians to protect their skies and their cities and inflict a lot of damage on the Russian occupiers, is coming from the U.S. and from the West, where a lot of material that Ukraine needs, artillery shells, drones, air defense systems, come from the West, particularly from the United States.

So that needs to be cut. And that's exactly the point that Trump and his team were not ready to concede to Vladimir Putin. So he wants to get this from the battlefield. And for now, his generals are telling him that the war is trending into positive direction for the Russians, that despite the colossal losses that Ukrainians were able to inflict on the Russian invaders in the war of attrition, the bigger party, the Russians, will have an advantage over Ukraine, and that probably Ukrainian self-defense effort will run its course by beginning of this September or fall. And that's where the Russians really want to push hard on the battlefield.

ZAKARIA: It feels to me like what Putin worries about is military pressure from the West, military arms to Ukraine. For him, a military defeat on the battlefield. He's not that worried about additional sanctions because the main sanction would be a sanction on Russian oil. And if anything we're done on that front, oil would go to 150 to $200 a barrel. The Western economies would go into recession. He knows that.

So the thing he worries about is military aid. And Trump is simply not providing that, which means he's in a -- he's in a sweet spot right now.

GABUEV: I agree with you. I don't think that the Russians believe that the economic pressure toolkit is full of new, shiny objects that can really deliver a desirable effect on Russia. And indeed, his primary concern is the battlefield, where the West is unlikely to provide Ukraine with tools to reconquer all of the occupied territories, including Crimea. But the West is definitely able to help Ukraine to stay their ground, create a wall and a boundary that will really lead the Russians to realization that it's not worth it, that they will be losing tens of thousands of troops, but will not gain ground.

So this is possible. Like a genuine stalemate on Ukrainian terms. But the West needs to really roll up the sleeves and do a lot of heavy lifting, particularly with the U.S. and Putin's hope is that Trump is just absolutely not fit for this purpose.

ZAKARIA: Alexander Gabuev, sobering thoughts, but very intelligent ones. Thank you.

GABUEV: Thank you so much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Trump's big beautiful bill is law and its consequences could be disastrous for the U.S. economy, particularly Trump's own voters. We'll discuss next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:19:10]

ZAKARIA: On July 4th, as most Americans were celebrating the country's Independence Day, Trump signed his big, beautiful bill into law. The law extends tax cuts for the wealthy and adds new ones. Together, they total $4.5 trillion. It boosts spending for immigration enforcement and defense. And in an attempt to pay for some of those changes, it punishes the poor with, among other things, deep cuts to Medicaid.

How will this law affect the economy and Donald Trump's Republican Party?

Joining me now to discuss is Rana Foroohar. She is a global business columnist and associate editor at "The Financial Times" and CNN's global economics analyst.

Rana, so, you know, my theory about Trump's voters has always been that they are with him largely for cultural issues. And if he delivers for them chiefly on immigration, they sort of seem to put up with anything.

[10:20:04]

And it feels like this is confirmed by this bill, which really punishes his own voters, working class people, and rewards the rich.

RANA FAROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Yes, well, 100 percent. And your theory may turn out to be right. In a way, I think this bill is going to be the litmus test. I have always felt that there was a portion of the MAGA base that we're not necessarily with him for cultural reasons. And that we're just struggling, that have looked at both centrist parties and said, you know, you're not doing anything for me.

If these folks, these MAGA base people don't turn away from Trump now when they literally are not going to be able to pay for health care, this is going to become a kitchen table issue, the price of groceries is going to go up, then I think you're right. And I think that that has real implications for our country, for, you know, for where politics is going into a much darker place, I would say.

ZAKARIA: You pointed out to me that most of the reason Americans cycle in and out of poverty is health care.

FAROOHAR: Yes, it's a health care -- one-third of folks cycling in and out of poverty on a year-on-year basis is because of a health care emergency. So think about this. The people that come into hospitals and use Medicaid, they're not going to be able to do that anymore. You're going to have bankruptcies. You're going to have a disproportionate effect in red states, by the way, where a lot of people are receiving these benefits.

But, I mean, it is stunning to me that this bill is absolutely penalizing the MAGA base. It's exactly what Trump said he wasn't going to do.

ZAKARIA: Now, Trump says that the bill, because of all the tax cuts, the depreciation, all that is going to spur manufacturing in the United States, and that's going to be the compensation, I imagine. What is your sense? There are benefits in there. You know, the various business depreciation rules.

FAROOHAR: Yes.

ZAKARIA: And is that going to produce more manufacturing jobs?

FAROOHAR: So let's start with what's -- what business is getting. For starters a lot of it is going to finance. A lot of it is going to private equity. You know, if you still believe in trickle-down economics, you might say, hey, if we give tax cuts to the rich, they're going to start more businesses. But if you look at the last 20, 30, even 40 years of history, it just hasn't been the case. Every time we've gotten tax cuts, we have not seen some kind of huge investment boom.

And I would go back to the Trump one tax cuts and say, you know, the story that this was somehow all going to go into the building of new factories in America, that was completely untrue. It went into share buybacks that boosted the stock prices of companies, and it didn't help much else.

ZAKARIA: So one thing that the bill clearly does is it explodes the deficit.

FAROOHAR: Yes.

ZAKARIA: And now we're at really extraordinary levels with very high interest rates. Where does this take us?

FAROOHAR: So I think there's a couple of things to consider. One, you look at what these deficits are going to mean in the future. And it's very possible that you're going to have to see real entitlement cuts. I don't mean just Medicaid, I mean Medicare, Social Security. You're also going to have to see much higher taxes. The U.S. may be heading for the kind of, you know, cliff that the U.K. is already dealing with. That's point one.

Point two, I think that you're going to see and you already are seeing foreign investors saying, gosh, huge debt and deficit picture, very unstable politics, rule of law. We're not so sure about corruption up. Gosh, the U.S. starts to look like what I would call an emerging market. But these days emerging markets look pretty good. So, you know, the paradigm is flipped. And that means investors are leaving.

ZAKARIA: I close with the opening thought, though, which is at a time of heightened inequality, at a time when people at the bottom are really struggling, it is extraordinary to me that a -- that a party that says that it is representing those working class folks in a fairly cavalier fashion seems to have imposed so many cuts on them with so few benefits.

FAROOHAR: Yes. It's stunning. I mean, I -- when Trump came in for the second term, I looked at the coalition, MAGA and Musk, back then, billionaires versus working people. It always seemed fragile. I think it's getting more fragile by the day.

ZAKARIA: Rana, pleasure to have you on.

FAROOHAR: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS on Wednesday, chipmaker Nvidia became the world's first $4 trillion company, beating out the likes of Apple and Microsoft. I sat down with Jensen Huang, the CEO.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:57]

ZAKARIA: This week, Nvidia hit a historic milestone. It became the first company in history to hit $4 trillion in value, surpassing other tech giants like Apple and Microsoft. The success comes from its computer chips that drive today's artificial intelligence revolution. They power everything from chatbots like ChatGPT to robotics to self- driving cars.

I sat down with the man behind it all, Jensen Huang. He founded Nvidia more than three decades ago and still leads the company as CEO.

We'll get to his thoughts on the future of A.I., but I first want to show you what he had to say about the extraordinary competition developing between the United States and China for dominance in this field.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Jensen, let me ask you about this U.S.-China race that everyone talks about. And let me put it to you this way. For the last three administrations, Trump one, Biden and Trump two, there's been actually a bipartisan consensus that what we should be doing is denying China high-end computing power and capacity by denying them the highest end chips.

You have said that this strategy has backfired. Explain what you mean.

JENSEN HUANG, CEO, NVIDIA: Because depriving someone of technology is not a goal. It's a tactic. And that tactic did not -- was not in service of the goal. The goal, of course, is that -- that United States and China now represent a unique relationship that hasn't existed in the world for a long time. Two incredible countries, both would like to succeed, both would love to prosper, both would love to win. We would like the United States to be the world leader. There's nothing wrong with that aspiration, and we should definitely try to achieve that and strive for that.

In order for America to be the world leader, just like we want the world to be built on the American dollar, using the American dollar as a global standard, we want the American tech stack to be the global standard. We love that the internet was created by American technology and is built on American technology. And so, we should continue to aspire for that. In order for us to do that, we have to be in search of all the A.I. developers in the world. And as it turns out, China is incredible in A.I. because 50 percent of the world's A.I. developers are in China and Chinese.

And so, our mission properly expressed, in order for America to have A.I. leadership, is to make sure that the American tech stack is available to markets all over the world so that amazing developers, including the ones in China, are able to build on American tech stack so that A.I. runs best on the American tech stack.

ZAKARIA: But what if, in doing that, you also are providing the Chinese military, Chinese intelligence with the capacity to supercharge, to turbocharge their weapons with the very best American chips, which are yours?

HUANG: We don't have to worry about that because the Chinese military, no different than the American military, will not seek each other's technology out to be built on top of it. They simply can't rely on it. It could be, of course, limited at any time.

Not to mention, there's plenty of computing capacity in China already. If you just think about the amount of -- number of supercomputers that are in China built by amazing Chinese engineers that are already in operation, they don't -- they don't need Nvidia's chips, certainly, or American tech stacks in order to build their military. ZAKARIA: Let me ask you a broader question. What difference does it make who gets there first? Because at some level, you've described this as electricity. So, if it's a kind of resource that's going to be sprinkled into every industry, everywhere, just like, yes, Edison invented electricity, but the Soviet Union started to use it. Everyone will use A.I., particularly given that there are open source models now.

Let's say I'm a company. I want to use A.I. to make my, you know, my sales force better. I use DeepSeek, or I use Llama, or I use OpenAI. Does it matter whether it's American or Chinese?

HUANG: In the end, I don't think it does. The DeepSeek R1 model is revolutionary. It's the world's first advanced open reasoning model. It's used. It's downloaded millions of times. It's used all over the world.

There were concerns about -- that it was trained in China and that it could be dangerous for that reason. First of all, there's no evidence of that. And whatever evidence there is, if anybody has it, you could just fine tune and distill it out. And so, so the technology itself is really completely incredible. The open source nature of it empowered startup companies, new industries, countries to be able to engage A.I.

Your question about, does it really matter who gets there first? I think in the final analysis, I don't think it does. However, I believe it is core to the American spirit to want to be the world's best. We should want to be the world's best in computing technology.

The computer industry is one of America's national treasures. There is little doubt that this industry that I'm part of is the world's best. And the computer industry is an industry by which every industry is built on.

ZAKARIA: So, I asked Bill Gates this question of whether these -- putting these bans on China actually had the effect of spurring China to develop its own industry at the high-end, and that therefore it was counterproductive.

[10:35:06]

He said, yes, I believe it's been counterproductive. Do you think the same thing?

HUANG: Let me give you an analogy. The recent ban on rare earth minerals has spurred the American industries to as quickly as possible gain independence of rare earth and magnets at a level that I don't think we've ever seen. And so, there's case in point.

ZAKARIA: So, if it happens to us, it must --

HUANG: That's right.

ZAKARIA: -- happen to them.

HUANG: That's right. The fact of the matter is, we are -- we are -- we are competitors but we are highly interdependent and -- to the extent that we can compete and both aspire to win. It is it is fine to respect our competitors. They're not -- they're not doing anything that we don't want to do for our own people. They're not doing anything that we don't aspire for ourselves. And so, we ought to go and compete and innovate and race fast.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, should you be concerned that A.I. will take your job? I asked Jensen Huang that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:45]

ZAKARIA: More now with Nvidia's visionary CEO Jensen Huang to talk about what's next in the A.I. revolution.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Demis Hassabis says that he thinks A.I. is going to cure all diseases. There are other people who say there's going to be kind of physical A.I. The A.I. will be able to interact with the physical world and, you know, kind of like begin to move things. What are you expecting?

HUANG: OK. Perfect. First of all, Demis is a genius and a really good friend and I'm really proud of him. If we could teach an A.I. how to understand language and images and videos and things like that, you would think that we can also teach A.I. proteins and chemicals, not just the -- not just the structure of them, but the meanings of them. Just like we can teach A.I. vocabulary, but also grammar and semantics, meaning.

And so, we could teach an A.I. the meaning of proteins, the meaning of a chemical and how they interact. And so, that what I just described is essentially the process of drug discovery. Now, in terms of physical, I question that you asked, if you could use a sentence you say, generate a video of a person picking up a glass on a kitchen counter. All of us now have seen, you know, incredible generative models like Google's Veo 3, where you can describe what I just said. And there's a video of a person picking up the glass.

Now, if you can generate a video of a person picking up the glass, why can't you generate now the actions for a robot to pick up the glass. So, the computer I think -- I think you could imagine that we're seeing the art of the possible now.

ZAKARIA: Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, says because it's going to be so revolutionary and so disruptive, you're going to see a massacre of white-collar jobs. The people who do, you know, all the routine things in accounting and law and even consulting. What do you think?

HUANG: I would say if the world runs out of ideas, then productivity gains translates to job loss. But over the course of the last 300 years, a hundred years, 60 years even in the era of computers, not only did productivity go up, employment also went up.

Now, the reason for that is because if we're -- if we have an abundance of ideas, ways that we could build a better future, if we were more productive, we could realize that better. Now, of course, in a world of zero-sum games, if you have no more ideas and all you want to do is this, then productivity drives down, drives -- you know, it results in job loss.

The thing that I will say is this on first principles, remember that A.I. is the greatest technology equalizer we have ever seen. It lifts the people who don't understand technology. And the way you prove it is you just look at ChatGPT, look at how many people are using ChatGPT for the very first time, and the first time you use it, you're getting something out of it.

And if you're not sure how to use it, you ask ChatGPT, how do I use you? And how do I formulate this question? It'll -- it'll write the question nicely for you, and then you ask it to answer the question.

And so, A.I. empowers people. It lifts people. It closes the gap, the technology gap. And as a result, more and more people are going to be able to do more things.

I'm certain, a hundred percent of everybody's jobs will be changed. The work that we do in our jobs will be changed. The work will change, but it's very likely -- well, my job has already changed. The work that I do, the work that I do has changed, but I'm still doing my job.

[10:45:00]

And so, I think that everybody's jobs will be affected. Some jobs will be lost. Many jobs will be created. And what I hope is that the productivity gains that we see in all the industries will lift society.

Now, one more last fact. Around the world we're about 30 -- 40 million skilled labor short. If we fill those jobs with robots, the industries will grow, the economy will grow. It'll create more prosperity. It'll create more opportunity.

And so, I think the fundamental thing is this, do we have more ideas left in society? And if we do, if we're more productive, we'll be able to grow.

ZAKARIA: And presumably A.I. will give us more ideas.

HUANG: That's right. Exactly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, how can A.I. change your life and for the better? I'll ask Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang what each of us can do to harness its power best when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:25]

ZAKARIA: With all the hype and fear around A.I., it's easy to lose sight of what it can actually do for you. I ask Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang just that question.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Jensen, everyone looks at A.I. and they're fascinated. They're dazzled, but they're scared. What do you say to people if somebody were to say to you, I'm entering this world of A.I. and I'm, you know, 20 years old, I'm 40 years old, what should I do?

HUANG: First of all, recognizing that this technology is the most extraordinary of technologies that the world has ever created. It's the reason why its created now and not a hundred years ago. The ability for us to create a computer that can be seemingly intelligent and to manufacture intelligence of such a broad range of capabilities and do it at such a large scale, of course, is something that is really impactful.

The thing that I would do, and I encourage everybody, a hundred percent of Nvidia employees are encouraged to use A.I. One hundred percent of our software engineers already use A.I. A hundred percent of our chip designers use A.I. It is -- I encourage it to the point of mandating it.

ZAKARIA: You once said that this is the revenge of the English major. Meaning that you can now code just using English, right?

HUANG: The programing language of computers in the future is English, you know, or whatever language you choose. And this is really just such an extraordinary thing. So, what I would recommend for anybody who's concerned about A.I., go use A.I. You know, ChatGPT is so incredibly useful and -- there's ChatGPT. There's Gemini Pro. You know, there's Perplexity. There's Grok. There's -- there's a lot of different -- and I use all four of them.

ZAKARIA: What do you make of this MIT study where they had people use A.I., use just search and not use it. And then at the end of it, they asked them to do cognitive tasks. And the people who had used A.I. scored the worst, which sort of makes some intuitive sense. If you rely a lot on a machine to do all the thinking for you when you're then asked to think, you know, maybe those muscles have gotten slower. How should we -- what would you do in a situation like that?

HUANG: Well, first of all, I haven't looked at that research yet, but I have to admit I'm using A.I. literally every single day, and I think my cognitive skills are actually advancing.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

HUANG: And so -- and the reason for that is because I'm not -- I'm not asking it to think for me. I'm asking it to teach me things that I don't know or help me solve problems that I otherwise wouldn't be able to solve reasonably. The research --

ZAKARIA: So, that's important. So, you say don't use it as a crutch for things you can do. Use it for things you can't do.

HUANG: Yes. I'm not exactly sure what people are using it for that would cause you to not have to think, but you have to think in order -- for example, the idea of prompting an A.I., the idea of asking questions -- for example, you're spending most of your time today asking me questions. In order to ask good questions, it's a highly cognitive skill.

And as a CEO, I spend most of my time asking questions and 90 percent of my instructions are actually, you know, conflated with questions. It is -- it is veiled within questions. And when I'm interacting with A.I., it's a questioning system. You're asking it questions.

And so, I think that in order to formulate good questions you have to be -- you have to be thinking. You have to be analytical. You have to be reasoning yourself.

In order to -- when you receive an answer from an A.I., I wouldn't -- I wouldn't just receive it. Usually what I do is I say, are you sure this is the best answer you can provide? I take the answer from one A.I. I give it to the other A.I. I ask them to critique itself.

You know this is no different than getting three opinions. Three doctors' opinions. I do the same thing. I ask the same question of multiple AIs. And I ask them to compare each other's notes and then, you know, give me the best of all the answers.

And so, I think that process of critiquing, criticizing the answers that you're -- you know, critical thinking enhances cognitive skills. And so, all of the people who are taking those tests, I would advise that they apply critical thinking.

[10:55:01]

ZAKARIA: So, we're going to be OK?

HUANG: We are going to have to stay diligent, never take our eyes off the ball, just like we do with all things that we build, that we're excited about. Most technologies that are revolutionary, the truth of the matter is the engineers take it very seriously and they're doing a good job to try -- to try to build it safely, advance it safely.

I think we need to have global standards. I think we ought to talk about safety. We ought to have amazing people like Geoff Hinton remind us that the technology is incredibly powerful, that we have to dedicate as much attention to advancing its capability, as well as advancing its safety.

All of this is helpful. All of this is helpful and -- but my prediction is that it will be overwhelmingly positive. Some harm will be done. The world has to jump on top of it when that happens, but it will be overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, incredibly powerful.

ZAKARIA: Jensen Huang, thank you so much for doing this.

HUANG: Thank you very much, Fareed. Thank you. (END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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