80% people jobless by 2030? AI ad featuring Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman 'predicts' humans' future role

“By 2030, almost 80% of people had lost their jobs." “They had no money, no purpose.”

Yes , you heard that right. These claims were made by Tesla boss Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Open AI CEO Sam Altman, in a video that has caught everyone's attention on social media. Except – the video is fictional, an advertisement made using AI.

What does the video show?

The AI-generated advertisement opens with a fictional glimpse of 2036, where tech leaders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman appear to pitch their company. But in doing so, they seem to explain a dystopian reality—one in which humans are being used to power AI systems, effectively becoming part of the machinery they once created.

Elon Musk sets the tone: “By 2030, almost 80% of people had lost their jobs.”

Jeff Bezos follows, adding: “They had no money. No purpose. But they had a lot of time on their hands.”

Sam Altman delivers the punchline: “The less people actually did physical work, the more they wanted to appear as if they did.”

The advertisement clip – purely fictional – comes at a time when job losses due to AI have become a rapidly growing concern.

In January, Amazon slashed about 16,000 corporate roles – just three months after laying off another 14,000 workers. During that round of layoffs, Amazon cited restructuring aimed at “removing bureaucracy" in its operations, but the cuts also arrived as the company continues to ramp up spending on AI. CEO Andy Jassy had previously said that he anticipated generative AI to reduce Amazon's corporate workforce.

Last year, Microsoft initiated two rounds of mass layoffs — first impacting 6,000 and then another 9,000 positions. The tech giant cited “organizational changes,” but the cuts also arrived amid the company's increased spending on AI, reported AP.

Not just the video. On Tuesday, 24 February, a hypothetical AI paper predicting job losses and recession went viral on social media. It garnered over 12,000 likes, more than 8,000 reposts and around 8.2 million views.

What does the viral report say?

Citrini Research has called its report titled ‘The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis’, a “scenario, not a prediction”, that aims to prepare readers “for potential left tail risks as AI makes the economy increasingly weird”.

The study hypothesises a 2028 world with advanced machine intelligence that will render a number of human jobs obsolete, triggering massive layoffs, collapsing consumer spending and dragging down stock indexes like the S&P 500.

The report itself claims to be a thought experiment “detailing the progression and fallout of the Global Intelligence Crisis”.