Artificial intelligence will leave about 90 percent of people without jobs in the next 10 years, said Kunal Shah, Founder and CEO of fintech unicorn CRED, adding to the long running debate around AI and jobs.
90% of jobs to become obsolete?
“We are not realising the risk of AI. I can tell you with confidence that 90 percent of people who have jobs right now may not have their jobs relevant 10 years from now,” said Shah.
All this comes in the midst of an industry-wide debate over AI possibly replacing humans in jobs.
It follows the launch of the generative AI platform ChatGPT last November which can handle complex tasks on command and generate human-like responses to various prompts.
Upskilling to stay up to date
Fellow fintech CEO Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath advised companies to invest in upskilling its employees so that they stay relevant in an environment of fast-paced tech development.
Shah believes that while upskilling may save jobs, the time it will take will not be so quick.
“The time to upskill is going to be a real challenge. Unless you are a very curious compounding person, everybody’s job is at risk,” he said.
Investing in AI startups
He also said that he wants to build an AI company if it is to start up today.
“I’ve not invested in any good AI companies. But India can create good quality AI companies, it’s going to be exciting in terms of the scale,” said Shah, who is also an angel investor.
He has invested in about 80 fintech startups to date with an average ticket size of $50,000.
Indigenous LLM and potential uses
He expressed hope in Indian founders successfully building an LLM (Large Language Model) and is optimistic of the potential of entrepreneurs building products on the existing ones.
“India may have some unique advantage because you can actually combine people plus AI in a unique way.
We might have a very different software company with a copilot of AI, BPO companies with an AI copilot or different collection agencies in lending, with AI as a co-pilot.
We are entering almost the cyborg time of a company building,” he added.
