TechStuff TechStuff Redux: Will NVIDIA Save or Ruin The World?
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Dec 26, 2025 
Stephen Witt, an insightful author and journalist known for his contributions to The New Yorker, dives deep into the world of NVIDIA, the titan of chip-making. He reveals how NVIDIA's GPUs revolutionized AI, discusses the secretive nature of data centers, and critiques potential risks surrounding AI advancements. Witt also profiles Jensen Huang’s intense leadership style, explores threats to NVIDIA's dominance, and warns of the catastrophic implications if AI systems misinterpret directives. An eye-opening conversation on technology's powerful impact!
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NVIDIA Sells Chips To Data-Center Builders
- Major cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon buy NVIDIA chips and rent compute in data centers to frontier AI labs.
- NVIDIA therefore monetizes hardware indirectly via large-scale data-center customers and their tenants.
Model Weights Fit On A Candy-Bar Drive
- A trained model's weights fit on a small drive, so stealing that file from a data center would deliver enormous IP value.
- Data centers therefore hide locations and enforce high security against espionage risks.
Inside A Data Center's Pulse
- Visiting a Microsoft data center felt industrial: concrete barns, racks, cables, and relentless power pulses.
- Stephen Witt watched power spikes align with AI training cycles and imagined the tiny files that represent trained models.