“Spend less time doomscrolling on Instagram; spend more time using the AIs,” Srinivas told tech podcaster Matthew Berman.
He recognised the difficulties in keeping up with the quick developments in AI technology, which occur every 3 to 6 months, The Times of India reported.
Srinivas emphasised that being proficient with AI systems will soon be a crucial component of employment, saying that those “at the frontier of using AIs are going to be way more employable than people who are not. That’s guaranteed to happen.”
“The human race has never been extremely fast at adapting,” Srinivas warned, highlighting the rapid rate of AI development. He said that not adapting could lead to job losses, besides missing out on tech trends.
He believes that entrepreneurship is the answer to possible job loss. He encouraged initiative, saying that those who are affected should either start businesses that use AI or upskill and work for companies that use AI.
“Those who lose their jobs either start their businesses and use AIs, or they end up learning the AIs and contribute to new companies,” he suggested.
Srinivas gave specific instances, pointing to Perplexity’s Comet browser, a program made to automate tedious tasks. Such agent-driven technologies, he believes, could soon replace manual recruiter positions from finding applicants to organising interviews and handling follow-ups, according to the Economic Times.
“A recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt… You want it to keep following up… sync with my Google calendar… schedule a chat… push me a brief ahead of the meeting,” he said on The Verge’s ‘Decoder’ podcast.
Aravind Srinivas’ concern is shared by others in the AI field.
AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton cautions that automation will eventually replace routine intellectual activities, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei estimates that within five years, AI might replace up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs.
Other tech executives, such as Jensen Huang of Nvidia, have a more upbeat perspective, disputing that AI will transform jobs rather than completely replace them.