Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI firms must ensure safety, not wait for government rules: CNBC

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said artificial intelligence companies must take responsibility for making their models safe rather than wait for governments to introduce new regulations, CNBC reported.

Speaking at Nvidia’s GTC conference in Berlin, Huang said companies should address known risks immediately because legislation takes time to develop and implement.

“If there are concerns that exist today, it is your responsibility to take accountability and do something about it now, instead of waiting for laws and regulations to happen, which takes time,” Huang said.

Huang argued that companies also had a commercial incentive to build safe products, saying safety was essential to their success.

“There’s no such thing as a good product that’s not safe,” he said, adding that businesses had reasons to develop and deploy AI responsibly.

How Nvidia’s OpenShell aims to contain AI agents

Huang pointed to OpenShell, Nvidia’s technology for containing and monitoring AI agents, as one way to manage risks as AI systems become more capable of acting autonomously.

The technology is designed to monitor what AI agents do and restrict their access, helping prevent them from taking unauthorised actions. Huang compared the approach to keeping a baby in a playpen, where the child can move around within defined boundaries while remaining under supervision.

He described OpenShell as the first layer of a broader safety system that would require additional protections.

“OpenShell is the first layer, and then there’s Sentry, the second layer, and then you’re going to have multiple layers of defence,” Huang said.

Huang expressed confidence in the technology’s ability to address certain incidents involving unintended access, while acknowledging that the industry could not anticipate every future risk.

“We don’t know what we don’t know about the future,” he said.

More than 100 companies involved in OpenShell initiative

Huang said more than 100 companies worldwide were part of the OpenShell initiative. They include Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Red Hat, as well as cybersecurity companies CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks.

The initiative brings together operating-system providers, cybersecurity firms and developers of advanced AI models to work on safety measures, Huang said. He added that Anthropic was an early adopter of OpenShell and had collaborated with Nvidia on the technology.

Huang said the broader goal was to ensure that AI development created an optimistic future while being pursued responsibly, supporting existing industries and enabling new businesses.

“The most important thing that we need to do as an industry is to create an optimistic future, but do it responsibly,” he said.

His remarks come as AI companies face growing scrutiny over how they manage risks from increasingly capable models, particularly systems that can carry out tasks with limited human supervision.