As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape global industries, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has urged young people to shift their priorities from compulsive scrolling on platforms like Instagram to actively engaging with AI tools.
As reported by The Times of India, his remarks came during a recent interview with Matthew Berman, a serial entrepreneur and founder of a popular AI-centric YouTube channel.
Srinivas warned that those who fail to adapt to AI may find themselves excluded from future job markets. “People who really are at the frontier of using AIs [systems] are going to be way more employable than people who are not,” he stated, calling this shift in demand “guaranteed”.
His comments echo broader concerns within the tech industry. The Times of India notes similar warnings from other leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who forecast that AI could replace half of all white-collar entry-level roles within five years, and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who flagged risks to "mundane intellectual labour".
Others, like Nvidia's Jensen Huang, remain more hopeful, envisioning AI as a transformative rather than purely eliminative force.
The pace of technological change, especially in AI, is daunting, Srinivas admitted. With new advancements arriving every three to six months, Srinivas believes the evolution is pushing human adaptability to its very limit. “(The) human race has never been extremely fast at adapting,” he reflected.
For many, this rapid disruption could mean job losses. Yet Srinivas sees an opportunity for reinvention through entrepreneurship. Rather than depending on traditional firms to create roles, he stressed that future employment must be driven by new ventures launched by individuals themselves.
As he put it, people either “start companies themselves and make use of AIs” or “learn the AIs and contribute to new companies”.
