The theory that this pandemic is intentional might be true but we can't be sure of the real reason behind it. And I doubt that the reason is to replace human labor. Just like what others said, the virus does not choose people to infect and even rich people get infected by it. If ever this is a planned pandemic, maybe it's for a different reason.
I think we are not ready to use AI to replace humans to work in many business fields. We still need to have employees work, and many people willing to work offline. We may need more years to see the AI because I think the AI needs to develop more before the AI can be used to replace human work. But I don't know if 1% of the group can use their power to do anything they want, but it could be possible because we don't know how strong they are.
I agree with you that most businesses are still relying on human labor. Perhaps they can afford AI because they are rich but they will still need human labor in a lot of cases and that 1% group of people are also benefitting from them.