Take-Two CEO: The idea that AI will make everyone unemployed is 'the stupidest thing I've ever heard'

The rise of AI will probably (hopefully) not end with armies of merciless T-series androids roaming the streets of shattered cities, hunting down the pathetic remnants of humanity. It's somewhat more reasonable to worry (in the short term, at least) that it could put a whole bunch of people out of work, and convert much of our artistic landscape into soulless, six-fingered sludge. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick doesn't think so, though: In fact, speaking at a recent TD Cowen conference, he predicted precisely the opposite.

Zelnick began his comments by noting that even though the game industry has access to tools that make development more efficient than ever, the cost of making games has gone up astronomically. The reason, he said, is that the creation of advanced development tools has enabled studios to take on more complex tasks. Generative AI will result in essentially the same thing, he thinks: "[It] will allow us to do a bunch of things more efficiently, so we'll turn our attention to other things, and those other things will probably still be costly and time-consuming."

Those «other things» will also still require actual human people. «I also don't think for a minute that generative AI is going to reduce employment,» Zelnick said. «That's crazy, it's actually crazy. It's not going to make people irrelevant. It's going to change the nature of certain forms of employment. And that's a good thing.»

Which isn't to say the embrace of generative AI will be painless: Zelnick acknowledged that people in some fields will be replaced by AI of various forms. But in the long run, he believes that too will be a good thing.

«For those of you who shop online, a little box opens up and says, 'Hi, I'm Bob, how can I help you shop for a couch today?' You do know that Bob is AI, right?» Zelnick said. «You're aware that Bob is not Bob, right? The person who was 'Bob' three years ago sitting in a call center in India, they're doing more interesting work now, because these are