Perplexity's CEO says you should spend less time doom-scrolling and more time using AI
"Spend less time doom-scrolling on Instagram, spend more time using AI," Aravind Srinivas said on a podcast episode by Matthew Berman published Friday.
"Not because we want your usage, but simply because that's your way to add value to the new society," he added.
Srinivas, whose company is positioning itself as an AI-native alternative to Google, said those who master AI tools will have the edge in the job market.
"People who are at the frontier of using AI are going to be way more employable than people who are not," he said. "That's guaranteed to happen."
But most people are struggling to keep up with AI, Srinivas said.
"The human race has never been extremely fast at adapting," he said. "This is truly testing the limits in terms of how fast we can adapt, especially with a piece of technology that's evolving every three months or six months."
"It does take a toll on people, and maybe they just give up," he added.
The CEO said some people will lose their jobs because they can't keep up. As AI shrinks headcounts across industries, Srinivas said new jobs have to come from entrepreneurs.
"Either the other people who lose jobs end up starting companies themselves and make use of AI, or they end up learning the AI and contribute to new companies," he added.
Srinivas and Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Tech leaders have been sounding the alarm about how AI is reshaping the workforce.
Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, predicted that AI could eliminate 50% of white-collar entry-level jobs within five years.
In May, he told Axios that AI companies and the government are "sugarcoating" the risks of mass job elimination in fields including technology, finance, law, and consulting, adding, "I don't think this is on people's radar."
Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called "Godfather of AI," echoed similar concerns, telling the Diary of a CEO podcast last month: "For mundane intellectual labor, AI is just going to replace everybody."
He said he'd be "terrified" to work in a call center or as a paralegal, and recommended becoming a plumber — a job he sees as safer from automation for now.
Others take a more optimistic view.
Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, said AI won't kill jobs, but it will transform how every job is done.
"I am certain 100% of everybody's jobs will be changed," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday. "The work that we do in our jobs will be changed. The work will change. But it's very likely — my job has already changed."
"Some jobs will be lost. Many jobs would be created. And what I hope is that the productivity gains that we see in all the industries will lift society," he added.
Demis Hassabis, the cofounder of Google DeepMind, said in June that AI would create "very valuable jobs" and "supercharge sort of technically savvy people who are at the forefront of using these technologies."
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