Stephen Witt doesn’t trust a robot with a knife. He does trust Nvidia to build the future of AI. The author of The Thinking Machine, a book about Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang, spoke at the FSTEC conference in Dallas and offered a guarded optimism about the autonomous age.
Witt called Nvidia the largest and most powerful company in the world, and he said Jensen has President Trump’s ear. He predicted the data center buildout will be the biggest infrastructure investment in history — bigger than railroads and canals combined, bigger than highways, bigger than telecom.
He also argued that everything that moves will soon have a motor with autonomous intelligence. Nvidia has been working on robot brains since before the robots themselves existed, and Witt said the company is positioned to earn about $250 billion in profit this year.
The Knife Test
Witt’s caution is personal. He’d gladly let ChatGPT do his taxes, but he draws a sharp line at kitchen work.
“I would gladly have ChatGPT do my taxes,” he said. “But if someone was like, ‘I’m going to give this robot a knife and chop some cabbage in the kitchen,’ I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing.”
He noted that fully autonomous restaurants already exist in China, though they still involve human cooks. Robotics remain unpredictable, he said.
Build Your Own AI
Witt advises restaurants to start building their own AI systems now, rather than waiting on vendors whose technology could quickly become obsolete. Five years ago, he’d have warned against in-house development, citing IT’s poor track record of delivering on-time results and staying within budget.
“Now it’s different,” he said. “I would advise you to build this stuff on the cheap. Take a team, if you’re considering an IT deployment, and you should know within just a couple of weeks of experimenting whether or not you have a pathway or a runway to cloud coding, essentially a bespoke software application for your organization.”
He cautioned against building anything requiring large-scale infrastructure deployment. “I would rely on a vendor for that,” he said.
Jensen’s Differing View
Witt sees himself at odds with Jensen on guardrails. He believes AI needs better limits, while Nvidia is all-in on robots.
“This summer we saw AI break out of its container and maraud through the internet, taking over other computers,” he said. “AI is already solving math problems that humans couldn’t solve.”
He described AI as superintelligent in some ways and very stupid in others, which creates risk. “I don’t think it’s an engineering problem that can’t be resolved.”
Public Skepticism
Americans are skeptical about AI and data centers. A Gallup poll found that 90% of Chinese respondents thought AI was good. In Singapore it was 70%, and in Korea and Japan it was very high.
In the U.S., only 35% of respondents viewed AI positively. Witt framed the gap as a political problem. “And we’re the country that’s in the lead. We’re the country that’s building it,” he said. “I’m not any kind of socialist or anything, like, I’m pro-business. But I see this ending, and it could have real repercussions down the road.”
Data Centers and Gas Stations
Americans also hate living near data centers. Witt suggested paying people who live near them as a fix. He added a practical note about what those people actually want.
“What they really love is cheap gasoline,” he said. “So every data center should have a Buc-ee’s attached to it.”
The Bottom Line
Witt is an optimist with a knife phobia. He sees Nvidia leading the AI boom and the data center boom, and he believes the risks can be managed with better guardrails.
His advice to restaurants is simple: experiment cheaply now, buy infrastructure later, and watch the robots closely.
| Item | Witt’s Advice |
|---|---|
| Taxes | Trust ChatGPT |
| Kitchen work | Don’t trust a robot with a knife |
| Data centers | Pay people to live near them |
| Gas stations | Attach a Buc-ee’s to every data center |
| Guardrails | Hope Jensen installs them |
- Trust ChatGPT with your taxes.
- Don’t trust a robot with a knife.
- Pay people to live near data centers.
- Attach a Buc-ee’s to every data center.
- Hope Jensen installs the guardrails he doubts.
Source material: “'The Thinking Machine' author gives an optimist’s view of AI, with guardrails,” Nation's Restaurant News.
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