'We cannot do computer graphics without artificial intelligence.' Jensen believes AI is essential to next-gen graphics technology

You may have noticed that PC gaming has been trending upscaling in recent years. AMD's compute based FSR, which we tested recently, has improved over the years, but it still isn't a match for Nvidia's AI powered DLSS. According to Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang we are now at a stage where AI is all but essential for next-generation graphic tech.

Huang, who spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia+ Technology Conference in San Francisco, this week, discussed a range of topics, such as the benefits of AI across a wide range of industries. When asked about which of these uses cases he was the most excited about, Huang replied:

"Well, at our company, we use artificial intelligence for computer graphics." Artificial intelligence is essential for computer graphics. We compute one pixel and infer the 32 others. It's amazing.

"We hallucinate the other 32 and it looks time-stable, it looks photorealistic and the image quality and performance are incredible."

It's interesting to use the term "can't". You can create computer graphics without AI interference. However, Huang is probably referring to the top-end graphics technology which is becoming increasingly hardware-demanding and reliant on hardware AI upscaling such as DLSS in order to run at acceptable frames rates.

"Computing a single pixel requires a lot of power." That's computation. It takes very little effort to infer the other 32. You can do it extremely fast. "So one of the key takeaways is not just about training the models...it's also about using the models"

Since its introduction, AI-based AI Frame Generation has reduced the load on GPUs by inferring pixels, and created extra frames. AMD's FSR solution is still a compute based upscaling method. However, there have been rumors that RDNA4 could have an AI hardware-based method to compete with Nvidia and Intel.

AI has many practical uses, beyond simply making our games run faster and look better.

"If it weren't for AI, we would be doing a lot more work in robotics and digital biology...I think that almost every tech bio company [that I meet] today is built on Nvidia", he added.

"Small molecules generation, virtual screening. Artificial intelligence will revolutionize the drug discovery process by allowing computer-aided drug discoveries. "So, incredible work is being done there."

It's easy to criticize the AI boom, from the huge power requirements of the vast amount of hardware used to train the AI to AI search suggestions that aren't accurate. But when it comes to computer graphics, it is now hard to imagine games without AI, or AI-based scaling in some form.

What about biotech? According to what Jen-Hsun says here, biotech may also play a major role in the future of healthcare.

Continued improvements in graphics and better medical technologies. Maybe this AI nonsense has some real-world applications after all. If we could make it more accurate, instead of better at creating hallucinations, that would be great.