Jensen Huang, the CEO of chipmaking giant Nvidia was recently asked about the cognitive issues AI inflicts on students, and his answers have been considered “unsettling” by some. This came about on the Ezra Klein Show, when Klein brought up a Chinese study on AI in schooling, which examined 26,000 students who began using AI in staggered intervals.
He explained that by delaying the AI adoption for some, researchers were able to directly compare the impacts of AI on student performance. Though students were able to complete work faster with AI, the study found compelling evidence that the cognitive skills needed to complete.
Huang agreed, saying that student cognition is getting much worse.
“Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness,” Huang said. “Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?”
“That’s my question for you,” Klein replied.
READ: Nvidia CEO takes unexpected Trump call on stage to dismiss AI risks (September 15, 2026)
“Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does,” Huang said in response. “We’re going to discover new [skills],” the CEO continued, “just maybe not those.”
Huang then mentioned that he lacked some basic life skills himself.
“There are a lot of skills that don’t matter,” he said. “My first confession, I actually don’t know my address… one day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.”
After some pushback from Klein, Huang stated his point is that “we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers,” because AI will take care of those mundane details — like remembering your own home address — for you.
READ: Nvidia CEO says the US has nothing to fear from China’s open-source AI models (July 23, 2026)
Huang’s comments have led to some backlash, with a Futurism report pointing out that while AI companies are increasingly pushing the idea of threats coming from a runaway “superintelligence” which humans can no longer control, the real threat might be something different. The impact of AI news, particularly on children and teens has come under scrutiny with an increasing number of young people losing cognition skills because of AI, as well as deteriorating social skills due to a reliance on “AI companions.”
Huang recently declared the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, following OpenAI’s launch of GPT-6 Astra, the company’s latest advanced AI model.