Posted originally on CTH on June 23, 2026 | Sundance
I previously saw an interesting discussion with NVIDIA Jensen Huang where in the context of AI he was asked: who is the smartest person you ever met?
Jensen Huang paused for quite a few moments thinking about the question before he answered.
Huang then redefined the word “smart.”
‘Smart’ is a word we have historically used in reference to ‘intelligence’. If a person was intelligent, we say that person is smart. However, in this era of AI at your fingertips, we must break this connection.
Intelligence, the assembly of knowledge about a particular matter of discussion, is no longer limited to educational or real-life training or study by people who focus intensely on subject material.
All of the knowing about a system, any system, process, history or discussion topic is now available almost instantly to anyone in this era of artificial intelligence.
The NVIDIA CEO then continued, therefore, once we break our historic reference connecting ‘intelligence’ and the generalized term ‘smart’, we can properly address the question you present.
Who is the smart man? Or, in the context of the originating question, “who is the smartest person?”
With this baseline established, Jensen Huang then outlined the traits of the smartest person. The smartest person is not the person with the greatest knowledge; the smart individual is the person who can tune into the frequency of the universal moment, look at the human reality of what is factually taking place that has not yet become an input into the AI capture record, and then predict the material outcome – the destination of knowledge that has not yet arrived.
Essentially, Huang explains the smart person is alone, tuning themselves into the vibration that is the consequence of human activity, financial interests, geopolitical movement, social transformation, economic shifts and cultural modifications. Then, positioning their interests at the place in the future where they predict all the activity will arrive.
The accuracy of prediction, or predictive positioning, then determines the scale of smart. The more accurate a person is under this perspective, the smarter they are.
I agree with this perspective.
All of human knowledge is now being assembled into AI databases for exploration by anyone with a keen interest or stake in the subject matter. Knowledge is no longer the valuation of ‘smart.’ The ability to predict the next step, phase or moment is the smart attribute.
With this context, we can now look back over the past few decades, not looking for the most intelligent voice, but rather looking at the accuracy of current position, contrast with the outline from the voices who make the predictions.
This interview about the ramifications of cultural change in Europe was given in 2010, sixteen years ago, centered on a book written by Mark Steyn and the context within the questioning is looking forward over a period of about 20 years.
Remember, this is 2010, written before the “arab spring, long before Brexit, well before President Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda as policy and before the U.K churned through seven prime ministers’ in a decade.
Remarkably, Steyn discusses/predicts what would happen if Islam tried to reform; if the U.S. pulled NATO resources out of Germany; if the U.K doesn’t radically alter direction and much more.
Watch the discussion or put the interview on play while listening to it in the background as you go about your tasks. Remind yourself at moments throughout the roughly 30 minutes, that the interview took place fifteen years ago.
Mark Steyn, a writer, political commentator, and friend of the Treehouse outlines his 2010 prediction about the destination of the Western world during a discussion with Peter Robinson.
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CTH has no financial association with any of this; I just find it super interesting, because my research folder is growing increasingly large with material behind a hemispheric shift. {TWEET}
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