‘The remaining things humans do may get paid well’: Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu explains how AI will make human care jobs, farming, pay big

Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho Corporation and one of India’s most prominent voices in the tech industry, weighing in on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and employment, has argued that the key challenge will not be so much in the technological disruption, but in economic disruption.

Taking to the social media platform X, Vembu said even if all software development were to be automated, it’s not like human beings will be out of jobs. 

“On the subject of AI and jobs:  Hypothetically, if all software development were to be automated - I want to emphasize that we are nowhere close to that goal - and all software engineers such as myself are out of work, it is not like human beings will have nothing to do,” he said.

According to him, the moot question will be in the domain of economics: AI will automate production of goods and services, and this will increase the volume of the goods, flooding the market, thereby, as per the universal law of supply and demand, would automatically bring the prices of goods down.

“The price of all the robot made goods and all the AI-made and AI-supported software would drop massively and be close to zero or zero. Breathing air costs us zero and we don't complain about it,” he wrote.

But this where the AI and automation becomes less of a doomsday scenario for us and, instead, would give rise to a re-evaluation of human-centric roles, such as caregiving, farming, teaching, and the arts.

“The remaining things humans do, may get paid well - as an example, taking care of children, home cooked meals, nursing sick people, priests that minister to people, people who take care of soil health, water health, crop health and cattle health (we used to call them farmers), forest restoration specialists, local live performing musicians and so on may get paid much more and that circulates income widely enough for people to afford the goods pouring out of highly automated factories,” Vembu said.

“That circulates income widely enough for people to afford the goods pouring out of highly automated factories,” he added.

The crux of the issue, he said, is economic: if factories and software services are run almost entirely by AI and robots, with negligible human input, how will consumers afford the goods and services produced?

The key answer, as per Vembu, is to ensure fair distribution through robust government policy.

“This is fundamentally an economic distribution problem, a problem of political economy and not purely a technological problem. One key part is for governments to crack down on monopolies, particularly tech monopolies. Only that will ensure that the prices of goods reflect the very low cost of production arising from AI and automation,” he said.

He called on governments to tackle monopolistic practices, especially in the tech sector, to ensure that the cost advantages from automation are passed on to consumers.

“There will be at least one country in the world that would get the political economy right,” Vembu concluded, expressing cautious optimism that with the right regulatory and social frameworks, the AI revolution could yield inclusive prosperity rather than widespread precarity.