Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI progress will come in waves, not a single breakthrough

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that the global race to dominate artificial intelligence will not culminate in one decisive moment. Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Huang compared today’s AI competition to historic technological rivalries, from World War II innovations to Cold War defence research.

“We’ve always been in a tech race with someone,” Huang said, drawing a parallel between the current push for AI leadership and the Manhattan Project. The key difference, he explained, is pace. Instead of one final astonishing leap, AI is evolving through continuous, compounding gains that may feel subtle in isolation but become transformative in retrospect.

Huang noted that AI systems have become nearly 100 times more capable in just the past two years, a rate of progress that has stoked concern about autonomous weapons and machine decision-making that might outstrip human ethics.

He argued that much of this acceleration is being channelled into safety and reliability. According to Huang, the advances are making AI systems “more useful and less error-prone”, countering fears that runaway development will spiral beyond control.

Huang also defended the involvement of the U.S. military in AI development. He suggested that defence participation can bring structure and accountability, ensuring the technology is integrated into national security frameworks rather than left to “shadowy, unaccountable actors”.

Rogan raised familiar anxieties about AI surpassing human judgment and the possibility that quantum computing could weaken modern encryption. Huang disagreed with the more catastrophic scenarios, saying AI will remain “a click ahead,” and reminding listeners that history is full of moments when society panicked over new inventions before eventually adapting as regulations and norms emerged.

Ultimately, Huang said he does not envision a world where one country or company triumphs in a grand contest. Instead, he described an outcome where AI becomes invisible infrastructure, quietly embedded in daily life. In his view, AI will be less a conquering intelligence and more a dependable computing layer that powers healthcare, transport and other essential systems without drawing attention to itself.