You already speak fluent computer code according to Nvidia's CEO

Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang — (Image credit: Nvidia)

Did you know that you already speak fluent machine code? Turns out human language is now computer programming code. So says none other than Nvidia's outspoken CEO, Jensen Huang.

In an intriguing aside during Nvidia's recent earnings call, Huang riffed on implications of the latest language-based AI models, including ChatGPT. "We now realize—the world now realizes—that maybe human language is a perfectly good computer programming language," Huang observes.

Huang explains how ChatGPT can do tasks it was never intentionally trained for. "It can be prompted in human language, but output Python, output Cobalt, a language that very few people even remember, output Python for Blender, a 3D program. So it's a program that writes a program for another program," he says.

The result will be a new era where everyone can program computers. "We've democratized computer programming for everyone, for almost anyone who could explain in human language a particular task to be performed," Huang says. "This new computing platform, this new computer could take whatever your prompt is, whatever your human-explained request is, and translate it to a sequence of instructions that you process it directly, or it waits for you to decide whether you want to process it or not."

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It all makes for a very interesting spin on the impact of AI. Much of the speculation typically surrounds the question of AI sentience and the 'ifs' and 'whens' of how we might lose control of our new creation.

But Huang's insight comes at it from precisely the opposite direction. According to Huang, AI language models like ChatGPT are going to do the opposite of AI taking over the human race. Instead, they're the tool we need to perfect our control over the machines.

Of course, both perspectives can hold important truths. Exactly how it all plays out could well turn out to be the defining issue of our times.

You can read all of Huang's comments on the matter in Nvidia's recent earnings call transcript.

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.