Day two of the G20 Innovation Ministerial hears from NVIDIA, OpenAI and Palantir CEOs

Amid protests and growing pushback over artificial intelligence use and data centers, day two of the G20 Innovation Ministerial at the Carolina Inn sent a clear message to global technology ministers: infrastructure and electricity are foundational to AI, and countries that hesitate to adopt them risk being left behind. 

United States Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick hosted the second day of the event. He opened the day’s first ministerial session by emphasizing the importance of promoting innovation through policies that support investment, scientific discovery and supply chain resilience. 

‘Five-layer cake’: Jensen Huang talks levels to AI

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang opened as the day’s first guest speaker, discussing the transformative nature of AI over the past four years and calling it the “biggest technology platform shift in human history.” He noted enormous progress in reimagining AI’s economic drivers to modernize the American energy grid. Huang said building AI infrastructure translates energy to “valuable productive intelligence.” 

Huang described AI as a “five-layer cake.” He said the first and second layers are energy and computer chips, and the third is large data centers that incorporate technology and energy — which money flows out of. He said the next layer is where AI models live, and that the most important part — and final layer — of this AI “cake” is where data and applications happen.