Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has some advice for people wanting to know which jobs are safe from artificial intelligence automation. He recently commented about the traditional jobs that drive the world today. This sparked discussions on what the future of AI looks like.
What did Sridhar Vembu comment?
In a post on ‘X’, Sridhar Vembu said that AI may pose a challenge to self-worth in some cases. He wrote, “If our notion of self-worth comes from the economic value we add, or if it comes from our intellectual pretense (cough), AI may pose a serious challenge to our self-worth.”
Meanwhile he added “On the other hand no one takes up activities like taking care of children, teaching children, taking care of the elderly, coming back to farming leaving a well paying job, going into the forest as rangers because they love the forest, local temple priests who do the daily rituals even when no one shows up at the temple, classical musicians who practise daily and perform for even very small crowds – none of them do it because those activities pay well.”
Mixed social media reactions
Sridhar Vembu’s post sparked a serious discussion on X, as netizens debated on what the future of work might look like. “The world is not perfect. Just look around, and you’ll see how many things can be done better. Cities can be rebuilt. The new jobs will solve new problems for humanity that we have had to live with because the alternative was not there or expensive,” one person wrote.
Another commented that AI will help humans expand their wisdom. “AI will help humanity to do more philosophical work, expanding the wisdom from the knowledge created by AI and non-AI sources, while churning of information to knowledge will be left to agentic AI and mundane work to physical AI.”
A third person commented on how AI might pose a challenge when it surpasses human intelligence. “We have managed to be at the top of the food chain because of our intelligence. Now we have built a peer that doesn’t sleep. The moment it efficiently surpasses the human, we are no longer the top of the food chain. We work for the machines,” this person posted.