The growing use of artificial intelligence could lead to widespread labour displacement in the coming years — making it imperative for people to adapt or become obsolete. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas outlined a somewhat dystopian future on Sunday as discussed AI advances with Nikhil Kamath. He joins a growing list of entrepreneurs and business leaders who have warned about AI disruptions and job losses.
“The dystopian part of it is that unfortunately in the short term there’s going to be a lot of labor displacement. Not as many people are needed to get work done anymore. So how people upskill themselves and adapt…those using AIs are definitely going to be well positioned,” he told Kamath on the latter’s podcast.
Several prominent individuals including OpenAI founder Sam Altman now predict that AI will first disrupt white-collar and creative jobs. Some companies have also cut back their hiring requirements as they move to automate processes.
The US-based businessman however saw several upsides to the growing wave of technological advances, but highlighted unemployment as a looming concern. Srinivas also predicted that the next five years would see everyone “have a personal assistant” and build “personalized things for them”. He also highlighted the growing potential for automation of tasks previously performed by human beings — emphasising the need for people to ‘skill themselves and adapt’.
“You don’t need to build 10,000 people companies to be a trillion-dollar company anymore. Definitely, the next generation of graduates getting jobs, existing big tech laying off people, or like not hiring more—all that stuff is definitely going to impact the market,” the CEO told Kamath.
Srinivas co-founded Perplexity AI — a search engine that uses large language models — in 2022 alongside three others. The initiative projects itself as a blend of ‘ChatGPT and Google’ which can be used to provide instant and credible answers to various queries.