Questioning fears of AI taking over human jobs, GTA parent Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick recently speculated that if artificial intelligence (AI) is to take jobs, wouldn’t that be of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Speaking at the Semafor World Economy 2026 summit, Strauss Zelnick argued that if AI were replacing roles at scale, it would likely affect someone like Musk first, given his deep involvement with technology.
When questioned about the impact of AI in the workplace, Zelnick replied saying “The richest man on Earth, Elon Musk, knows a little something about AI. The last time I checked, he has unlimited financial resources, and he has unlimited human resources, and apparently he has an unlimited number of ideas.”He continued: “You know, he knows his way around AI. The man works 20 hours a day”, adding “if AI would take anyone’s job, wouldn’t it take his job? Wouldn’t that be the number one job for AI to take? Why is he so busy?”Dismissing fears of AI-led job cuts, Zelnick gave his own example, saying that he is “working harder than ever” despite adopting AI in every part of life.
Godfather of AI Yann Lecun offers similar views
A similar view point has been shared by Godfather of AI Yann Lecun. Firing back at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei after Amodei predicted that AI could wipe out up to 50% of all entry-level tech, law, consulting and finance jobs within the next one to five years.LeCun wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Dario is wrong. He knows absolutely nothing about the effects of technological revolutions on the labor market.”LeCun also sidelined himself, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; other Godfathers of AI Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, saying that people should listen to economists.
“Don’t listen to him, Sam, Yoshua, Geoff, or me on this topic. Listen to economists who have spent their career studying this,” he said. Instead, LeCun pointed people toward a specific group of economists who have spent their careers studying exactly this question: Philippe Aghion, Erik Brynjolfsson, Daron Acemoglu, Andrew McAfee, and David Autor.
