'You should spend less time on Instagram; spend more time using the AIs': Perplexity CEO to youngsters

Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, has delivered a pointed message to young professionals navigating the future of work: stop doomscrolling, start learning artificial intelligence.

“Spend less time doomscrolling on Instagram; spend more time using the AIs,” Srinivas said in a recent interview with tech YouTuber Matthew Berman.

For Srinivas, AI literacy is not just a competitive edge, it is becoming a baseline requirement in today’s job market. “People who really are at the frontier of using AIs are going to be way more employable than people who are not. That’s guaranteed to happen,” he said. 

Srinivas argues that the rate at which AI is evolving has far outpaced society’s ability to adapt. “Human race has never been extremely fast at adapting,” he said, noting that innovations are emerging on a three-to-six-month cycle. “The clock is ticking on human adaptability.”

He cautions that this fast-moving landscape necessitates continuous learning and reskilling. Those who do not keep pace may find themselves increasingly irrelevant in an AI-dominated workplace. His warning echoes growing concern within the tech community.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has estimated that up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs may disappear within the next five years due to AI automation. Geoffrey Hinton, the deep learning pioneer often called the "godfather of AI," has similarly predicted the displacement of routine intellectual tasks. Still, not everyone is pessimistic, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that AI will augment rather than entirely replace jobs.

Srinivas is candid about the stakes. He acknowledges that some roles, especially those tied to repetitive knowledge work, will vanish. But he sees two paths forward: entrepreneurship or adaptation. “Either the other people who lose jobs end up starting companies themselves and make use of AIs, or they end up learning the AIs and contribute to new companies,” he said.

This divide between creators and users of AI tools may widen, he suggests, as those who harness these technologies become disproportionately more valuable in the job market.

Srinivas offered a striking illustration of AI’s potential to replace routine office jobs during a recent appearance on The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast. He described how Perplexity’s upcoming AI browser, Comet, could potentially automate the end-to-end workflow of a recruiter.

“A recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt,” he said. He detailed how a single AI system could handle candidate sourcing, outreach, follow-ups, spreadsheet updates, calendar syncing, and meeting preparations. “Some of these things should be proactive. It doesn’t even have to be a prompt.”