Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently shared what he would study if he were starting university again in 2025 — and it wouldn’t be what he actually did decades ago. During an interview with CNBC on his visit to Beijing, Huang was asked what he would focus on if he were 22 today. His answer was clear: he would choose the physical sciences. “For the young, 20-year-old Jensen, that’s graduated now, he probably would have chosen more of the physical sciences than the software sciences,” Huang said. This comes as a surprise to many, since Huang studied electrical engineering — earning his degree from Oregon State University in 1984 and later completing his Master’s at Stanford. But the world has changed a lot since then, and so has the way science shapes modern technologies.
Huang didn’t go into deep detail about why he prefers physical sciences today, but it fits with something he’s been talking about lately — a concept he calls “Physical AI”. This idea is being described as the “next wave” of artificial intelligence. It’s not just about generating text or recognising photos any more — it’s about helping machines interact with the real world and understand it better.
AI has come a long way. Earlier, it focused mostly on perception — for example, recognising images or voice. Then came Generative AI, which could write text, create images and hold conversations. Now, according to Huang, we are in a new phase: Reasoning AI. This version of AI goes a step further. It doesn’t just recognise or generate — it solves new problems and makes decisions in real time.
“We’re now in this age called ‘Reasoning AI’ where you now have AI that can understand, it can generate, [and] solve problems and recognise conditions that we’ve never seen before,” he said, as reported by CNBC. Huang believes this new kind of AI will lead to what he calls “agentic AI” — smart digital assistants that can act like human workers, doing tasks independently and even making decisions.
But for AI to go beyond the screen and function in the physical world, Huang says we need to understand real-world forces better. “The next wave requires us to understand things like the laws of physics, friction, inertia, cause and effect,” he said. These are the building blocks that will help machines safely and effectively move, hold, or react to real objects.
“And when you take that physical AI and then you put it into a physical object called a robot, you get robotics,” he added. For Huang, this isn’t just future thinking. With global labour shortages and more factories being built, he sees intelligent robots as a necessary part of the workforce.
Nvidia, the company he co-founded in 1993, has recently become the world’s most valuable company. Its chips power many of today’s AI tools, and with Huang’s vision, the future of AI looks even more connected to the physical world.
– Ends