Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is of the view that artificial intelligence will not destroy jobs, but change how people think about work. In a recent interview, he compared the current anxiety surrounding AI to initial apprehensions about the digital era.
According to Tenev, AI will create new types of roles and entire job categories. Instead of eliminating work, AI will create a shift in the skills that matter and how people contribute in the workplace.
"AI will lead to an explosion of not just new jobs, but new job families," Tenev told FOX Business' Charles Payne during ‘FOX Business In Depth: The A.I. Arms Race' on Wednesday.
Comparing the shift to AI to the transition from farms and factories to office and digital jobs, Tenev said fears around new technology are not new. He said people a century ago might not have viewed online discussions as real work, similar to the skepticism about AI in modern workplaces.
"Maybe 100 years ago, our ancestors would be looking at what you and I are doing right now, which is sort of like talking to each other digitally about AI. They think, you know, that's not real work," Tenev said.
Tenev added that future job opportunities will also be initially underestimated. He predicted new careers in areas like investing and trading could emerge.
"I think in the same way that they'd probably not think of what we're doing as real work, we're [going to] look ahead at the job families and job opportunities in the future," he added.
Tenev emphasised that technological disruption has always reshaped work rather than erased it. He noted that the pace of change today is much faster than in previous transitions.
"Even though we've seen disruption like this in the past, we have a feeling that it's going to be more rapid," he said. "The velocity, the rate of change, and the acceleration makes us very nervous."
On the pace of AI's penetration, ace investor Warren Buffett also recently warned that AI's impact is unpredictable, comparing its risks to nuclear weapons. “The genie is out of the bottle,” he told CNBC.
Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had also echoed Tenev's sentiments, noting that the world would soon be wondering what counts as ‘real work' in the AI era. In his view, what people consider “real work” changes with every era.
“It's very possible that if we could see those jobs of the future, we would think maybe our jobs were not as real as a farmer's, but more real than the game you're playing to entertain yourself,” he said during an interaction at DevDay 2025 in October.
