GoKawiilKey Takeaways Nvidia vice president Bryan Catanzaro says that for his team, AI compute now costs more than the employees using it, making AI more expensive than human labor.
A 2024 MIT study finds AI automation is economically viable in only about 23% of jobs, with humans still cheaper in the remaining 77%.
Despite unclear productivity gains and high costs, big tech companies have committed around $740 billion to AI-related expenses this year, a 69% jump from 2025.
A key Nvidia executive says that AI isn’t reducing labor costs — right now, it’s actually more expensive than the human workers that companies already have.
“For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees,” Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, recently told Axios.
Bryan Catanzaro. (Photo by Big Event Media/Getty Images for HumanX Conference)
A 2024 MIT study supports this view. Researchers looked at what it would take for AI systems to match human performance across different jobs and found that automation made financial sense in just 23% of roles that rely heavily on visual tasks. In the other 77% of cases, keeping human workers was still the more cost-effective option.
There are also examples of AI making costly errors. In one case, an engineer said an AI tool wiped out his database and network.
Companies are investing in AI
Despite the drawbacks of AI, big tech companies are still investing heavily in it. According to Morgan Stanley, tech firms have already committed about $740 billion to AI-related spending this year, a 69% increase from 2025. Over just the past year, fees for AI software have also gone up sharply, increasing by 20% to 37%, according to spending management company Tropic.
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