'Spend less time doomscrolling on Instagram, more using AI,' warns Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has issued a blunt message to the next generation of workers: stop wasting time on social media and start learning how to use artificial intelligence tools or risk being left behind.

In a conversation with Matthew Berman last week, Srinivas said, “Spend less time doomscrolling on Instagram; spend more time using the AIs.” He believes AI literacy will be a major differentiator in future employability. “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.”

His remarks reflect growing concern among tech leaders about how quickly the job market is shifting under the influence of AI. With rapid advances in capabilities and frequent model updates, Srinivas warned that the pace of change is testing human adaptability. “Human race has never been extremely fast at adapting,” he said. He added that the field is moving in cycles of three to six months, pushing people to constantly reskill or fall behind.

Srinivas acknowledged that some job losses are inevitable, particularly among those who cannot keep pace. However, he sees entrepreneurship as a vital path forward. “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.

His views echo similar concerns expressed by other figures in the AI space. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has projected that up to half of all entry-level white-collar roles could vanish within five years due to automation. Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” has also warned that routine intellectual tasks are increasingly at risk. At the same time, executives like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggest AI will augment jobs rather than erase them entirely.

For Srinivas, the message is simple: those who embrace AI early will be the ones shaping the future, not scrambling to catch up.