Artificial intelligence continues to be a major talking point in the world of video games and beyond, and now the top boss at GTA parent company Take-Two has chimed in with his thoughts. Strauss Zelnick said in an interview that artificial intelligence will be embraced as a digital tool to assist humans and that employment numbers will go up long-term as a result.
“Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron; there’s no such thing. Machine learning… machines don’t learn,” he told GI.biz. “Those are convenient ways to explain to human beings what looks like magic. The bottom line is that these are digital tools and we’ve used digital tools forever.”
He added: “I have no doubt that what is considered AI today will help make our business more efficient and help us do better work, but it won’t reduce employment.”
Zelnick went on to say that history has shown time and again that the arrival of new digital technologies ultimately leads to further job creation, increased productivity, and increased GPD overall. “I think that’s what’s going to happen with AI. I think the video game business will probably be on the leading, if not bleeding, edge of using AI,” he said.
Others in the video game space, like EA CEO Andrew Wilson and Microsoft’s Brad Smith, have admitted that advancements to AI will lead to job losses in the short term while increasing employment rates on a longer-term timeline.
Before this, Zelnick said people are overstating the power and abilities of AI technologies. “It’s not going to allow someone to say, ‘Please develop the competitor to Grand Theft Auto that’s better than Grand Theft Auto’, and then they just send it out and ship it digitally and that will be that. People will try, but that won’t happen,” Zelnick said.
The executive went on to say that AI technologies may be similar to a hand calculator. Decades ago, parents worried that hand calculators would mean children wouldn’t need to learn math, but that wasn’t the case. “The answer is yes, you still have to learn math, turns out, you absolutely have to learn math, but you have a tool that makes it easier to do. And ChatGPT is the same thing,” he said.
Also in the interview, Zelnick said Take-Two’s efforts in the AI space will not infringe on other people’s intellectual properties, as some have been accused of already. OpenAI, for example, is being sued by The New York Times over claims that the AI company used its data to train its large language model. “So of course, we’re mindful of what technology we use to make sure that it respects others’ intellectual property and allows us to protect our own,” he said.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer believes AI will be a positive, additive force in gaming. PUBG creator Brendan Greene’s new game, meanwhile, is using advanced machine-learning to create massive and realistic open worlds.
Video game voice actors remain on strike over concerns around AI, among other things. One of the more prominent voice actors, Jennifer Hale, has discussed why she believes AI is an “existential” threat.