Nvidia CTO Michael Kagan Skeptical about Cryptocurrencies: Prioritizing AI and Gaming
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Michael Kagan, Nvidia’s Chief Technical Officer, has voiced concerns about the use of cryptocurrencies in society. He believes cryptocurrencies have no societal value and AI applications, such as the chatbot ChatGPT, are more useful than crypto mining. These comments highlight NVIDIA’s poor relationship with the crypto community.
@nvidia's Chief Technology Officer, Michael Kagan, has stated that cryptocurrencies like #Bitcoin provide no real value to society and proposed that the company's resources would be better spent on #ai chatbots like #ChatGPT.
Check this out for more: https://t.co/zZAopRAoHk pic.twitter.com/ueRDJL96ya
— CoinTopper (@CoinTopper) March 27, 2023
It is worth noting that the Nvidia company limited its graphics cards’ mining capability for Ethereum In 2021. However, the reason could be tied to Nvidia’s strategy of prioritizing AI researchers and gamers. Michael Kagan supports this decision, claiming that using processing power for crypto mining is of little value.
#cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
Tech chief says the #development of chatbots is a more worthwhile use of processing power than #Crypto mining@Cryptoworldhelp pic.twitter.com/pOU3kUnveK
— Crypto World (@Cryptoworldhelp) March 27, 2023
It’s important to mention that Nvidia has sold a significant amount of equipment to people who mine cryptocurrencies, and their graphics cards are a crucial part of this process.
Kagan’s Preference for AI over Cryptocurrencies
Kagan thinks that artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, like ChatGPT, are much more useful to society. It is worth mentioning that ChatGPT is an AI tool that has been created using around 10,000 Nvidia chipsets, and many analysts believe that we are currently in the first phase of AI disruption.
Formerly, Nvidia chipsets were extensively employed by proof-of-work cryptocurrency miners. Nvidia graphics cards were highly popular before Ethereum switched to a proof-of-stake mechanism. Even now, these cards are utilised to mine Ethash-based networks that support Ethereum Classic.
Nvidia Limits Mining Capabilities
Nvidia limits users from using their graphics cards solely for crypto mining due to the high demand for chipsets. They claimed that their graphics cards were required in other industries such as gaming and design, where advanced graphics cards are required for smooth operations and rendering.
Kagan agreed that limiting the use of Nvidia graphic cards for mining was necessary because Nvidia is the best for parallel processing, which is essential for crypto mining. Despite selling many cards to miners, Kagan believes that mining doesn’t provide value to society, unlike AI, which does.
“All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and eventually, it collapsed because it didn’t bring anything useful to society. AI does.”
Kagan compares crypto to high-frequency trading and argues that while trading brought business by enabling traders to save time, crypto doesn’t benefit humanity. Despite this, he continues to criticize crypto.
“I never believed that [crypto] is something that will do something good for humanity. People do crazy things, but they buy your stuff, and you sell them stuff. But you don’t redirect the company to support whatever it is.”
