Nvidia’s Huang tells G20 nations to build AI infrastructure or risk falling behind

Nvidia ↘ 0.59% CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stage Wednesday at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, pressing the world's largest economies to rapidly expand AI infrastructure and resist the urge to regulate a technology they say is still in its formative stages.

"Every single country needs to build infrastructure so that you can support your own local economy," Huang told ministers, likening AI to water, electricity, and other essential utilities. He warned that leaders who frame AI in terms of fear and uncertainty risk leaving their nations behind. "The worst outcome is that you don't take advantage of it, that you are left behind. That is the single worst outcome," he said.bloomberg+1

Huang appeared alongside U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who called the Nvidia chief an "American treasure". Altman, whose company built ChatGPT, also addressed the gathering as part of the event's second day of high-level discussions on AI policy and trade.bssnews+1

The Carolina Principles

The appearances capped a two-day meeting where the Trump administration sought to rally G20 members around a light-touch regulatory framework. On Tuesday, White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios unveiled the "Carolina Principles," under which signatories agreed to apply existing sector-specific rules to AI where possible and reserve new regulation only for genuinely novel situations. Kratsios told reporters that China signed the principles, though he did not provide a copy of the document.reuters+1

Huang reinforced that message on Wednesday: "Don't regulate hypothetical theoretical harm, regulate actual and pragmatic harm," he said. He pushed back on fears that AI would eliminate jobs, calling the notion "nonsense" and arguing that tasks would be automated while the purpose of work would remain.devdiscourse+1

A Broader Push Amid U.S.-China Rivalry

The gathering took place against a backdrop of intensifying competition between the United States and China in AI. Chinese open-weight models have gained ground against proprietary systems from American firms like Anthropic and OpenAI, adding urgency to Washington's effort to keep allied nations within its technology ecosystem. "It has increased urgency for this administration to make sure that the rest of the world stays within the American tech ecosystem and doesn't seek alternatives," said Vivek Chilukuri of the Center for a New American Security.reuters

Tuesday's sessions featured video appearances by Meta ↘ 0.96% CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google Alphabet Inc. ↘ 1.08% DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who criticized the European Union's tech regulations and warned of a looming power shortfall for data centers. A United Nations panel had recently cautioned that AI development is outpacing both scientific understanding and government policy. The Chapel Hill meeting is one of several leading up to the G20 leaders' summit in Miami in December.dailytarheel+1