It is well known that Silicon Valley engineers earn high salaries. Now AI tokens are expected to emerge as a new incentive. On March 20, CNBC reported that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (젠슨 황) proposed paying AI tokens as a bonus on top of annual salary.

Huang said he is considering a model in which engineers receive additional AI tokens to boost productivity, in addition to base pay of several hundred thousand dollars a year. The tokens are used for AI systems to process data and automate tasks, and they are emerging as a new recruiting tool in Silicon Valley.

That aligns with the job-market changes Huang envisions. He predicted a shift to a structure in which AI agents automatically handle complex tasks and engineers manage them. Huang also said he is planning an environment inside Nvidia where human employees work alongside hundreds of thousands of AI agents.

The shift is raising the possibility that AI agents could replace white-collar labor. Oaktree Capital Management Chairman Howard Marks (하워드 막스) warned that greater AI autonomy could expand an existing $50 billion market into a market worth trillions of dollars. Goldman Sachs said AI could automate 25 percent of U.S. work hours, with 6 to 7 percent of jobs potentially being replaced as a result.

As AI reshapes the labor market, companies are having difficulty applying AI technology. Bruno Gicardi (브루노 기카르디), CEO of IT company CI&T, said, "AI agents are creating a new abstraction layer, and now software engineers can instruct computers in everyday language rather than programming languages."

Still, the success rate of AI projects remains low. According to consultancy IntelligenceBriefing, 80 to 85 percent of AI projects have failed since 2018.