[tadfisher]

It is at least entertaining when certain CEOs speak off-the-cuff and reveal they have no clue what they are talking about.

Jensen thinks DLSS 5 works at "the geometry level", for instance. Oh and he pays engineers $500,000 to spend $250,000 on Claude tokens.

[m00x]

It doesn't reveal that they have no clue of what they're talking about. They know that a good number of idiot CEOs will hear this and dictate their engineers spend more claude/codex money, which benefits them.

Jensen isn't an idiot, he's capitalizing on the market.

[bluefirebrand]

> They know that a good number of idiot CEOs will hear this

This is true regardless of the specific jargon used, though. Or are you saying that idiot CEOs will not be impressed by correct claims only stupid claims?

[kimixa]

It doesn't reveal they don't have no clue either - the problem is that both "Doesn't actually understand" and "Does understand but saying it because they think it'll benefit their products" look exactly the same from the outside.

All we know is he's saying things that are technically incorrect. And I'm not sure where that falls on the line of "Just Acceptable Marketing BS" to "Lying to the market about a Publicly Traded company" that would fall if he does understand it.

And while true he very much had deep technical education and roles, he's been C-level for over 30 years now. And a lot can change - both in the underlying technology and an individual's technical understanding - in 30 years.

[TallGuyShort]

He might be, but this sounds suspiciously like "Trump is playing 4D chess and trolling the media - he would never actually do the dumb thing he just suggested he was about to do."

[MeetingsBrowser]

The joke is on everyone else, our favorite leader is just pretending to be an idiot!

[altmanaltman]

I mean you're kind of attributing this to malice when its actually incompetence. Nvidia doesn't need any shilling by its CEO to increase its sales or capitalize on the market. It's purely banter from his pov, not some super intelligence spectre ploy to sell more GPUs.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't know the quote you're referring to, but if there were a CEO who I think understands the technical details of his products much better than most, it would be Jensen Huang.

And there is a huge difference between a CEO having "no clue" and a CEO trying to speak in terms that laymen and the business press can understand (even if a ton gets lost in translation).

[yoyohello13]

How is "the geometry level" lost in translation. It's simply a lie.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Again, I'm not familiar with the quote, nor the details of the tech behind DLSS 5.

But even just taking what you wrote, there is a huge difference between lying to the press to get positive coverage/hype and just being outright clueless, which is what the GP comment was asserting. I sincerely doubt Jensen Huang is clueless.

[Aurornis]

> Oh and he pays engineers $500,000 to spend $250,000 on Claude tokens.

If a CEO wants to pay engineers $500,000 and then let them spend as much as they need on tools and services, I'm all for it.

Getting angry at a CEO for paying high compensation and also having a high tool use budget is not a take I expected on Hacker News.

[_se]

250k isn't a budget. It's the minimum that he said someone _should_ spend or else he would think they're doing something wrong.

It's an insane take. Completely bone-headed. Just obvious grift.

[qwertox]

> Oh and he pays engineers $500,000 to spend $250,000 on Claude tokens.

What he said was that if he's paying 500,000 for an engineer, he expects that engineer to spend at least 250,000 in tokens, to get the most out of those $500,000.

Basically that it would be counterproductive to hire a top tier engineer and restrict his token usage to let's say $200 or $500 a month.

I think he's right on this.

[tadfisher]

> Basically that it would be counterproductive to hire a top tier engineer and restrict his token usage to let's say $200 or $500 a month.

That's not what he said, though. He gave a number, and that number happens to correspond to something on the order of 25 billion Opus 4.6 tokens (hard to say what input vs. output ratio is like). He also said he is currently "deeply alarmed" if his engineers don't spend that much.

[ai_critic]

So, is your position that Jensen Huang, CEO of NVDA, is an idiot?

[_se]

Yes, it is very possible for someone to be smart and an idiot at the same time.

Do you think you're smart? Have you ever done something and said "man, I'm an idiot"? It's just like that.

Of course, the other explanation is that he's just grifting, which is also very possible.

[kentm]

"Smart" is something you do, not something you are. People with very large amounts of raw intelligence fall down some very dumb intellectual rabbit holes that its practically a meme: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21

Having raw intelligence doesn't help if you don't apply rigor to your thinking. I suspect that very successful people actually end up falling into habitual mental shortcuts that cause them to promote stupid things at a later time.

[yoyohello13]

They very much have a clue what they are talking about. The truth of what they are saying is the problem. Their job is to say whatever makes number go up, truth has nothing to do with it.

[pydry]

Jensen Huang knows that this is a gold rush and that his job is to sell shovels.

He's not stupid.

[vrganj]

DLSS5 is such a disaster of corporate AI slop brain. Completely replaces the artistic vision with generic AI faces: https://xcancel.com/foxygames_uk/status/2034010117851463914