Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick seems slightly more gung ho about generative AI, recently calling it the "future of technology" during a talk at The Paley Center for Media.
The corporate owner of Rockstar Games (Red Dead, GTA) and 2K Games (Borderlands 4, Bioshock, Mafia) haven't been as loudly pro-AI as some other big name publishers, but Zelnick recently changed his tune, predicting that the tech will actually create jobs, not kill them. (Thanks, Game Developer.)
"It will not reduce employment, it will increase employment," he said. "Technology always increases productivity, which in turn increases GDP, which in turn increases employment. And you know, in 1865, 65% of the US workforce was involved in agriculture."
But Zelnick's theory runs counter to reports that predict AI will cause more job losses with practically no boost to GDP, as well as job loss predictions from OpenAI's Sam Altman. InXile Entertainment boss and Fallout veteran Brian Fargo even shared that he was "worried about job loss" thanks to the tech.
Zelnick then elaborated on his example, explaining that the USA produces tons of food for with only 2% of its population involved in agriculture. "And I defy you to find anyone who recently said to you 'It's so horrible I can't get a job as a farmer,' and employment is way up," he added. "AI is a great thing. It's a great thing for every industry. Will it create a genius? No. Will it create hits? No. It's a bunch of data with a bunch of computers with a language model attached."
Still, Zelnick months ago was very proud of the fact that GTA 6's "creative genius is human" and was adamant that workers deserve to be paid if their work is then reused by AI "after their work is done." And even now, he's not claiming that generative AI can hold a candle to what creatives can do: "And by definition, a data set is backward-looking, while creativity is forward-looking. To the extent that AI appears to be forward-looking, it is what a predictive model is."
