Yet another CEO in the artificial intelligence space is warning that major job losses are imminent due to advancements in the technology—and they may come much sooner than many anticipate.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, cautioned that roles such as recruiters and executive assistants could soon be rendered obsolete by the next wave of AI improvements, particularly as AI browsers become more widely adopted.
Perplexity recently launched the Comet AI browser, featuring an Assistant mode capable of researching topics, booking flights, scheduling meetings, and more. Speaking on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Srinivas acknowledged that while Comet currently struggles with long-horizon tasks, human assistants are still needed to manage complex workflows. However, he added, “I’m pretty sure [that within] six months to a year from now, it can do the entire thing.”
The emergence of more advanced reasoning models, he said, could put recruiter roles especially at risk.
“I’m betting on the fact that … a sufficiently good reasoning model … could get us over the edge where all these things are suddenly possible and then a recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reach outs,” he said.
Srinivas believes that with access to a user’s Gmail and calendar, Comet’s AI Assistant can not only match a human assistant’s capabilities but even exceed them when it comes to follow-ups.
For example, if a meeting invite is sent and responses begin rolling in, the AI can “go and update the Google Sheets, mark the status as responded or in progress and follow up with those candidates, sync with my Google calendar, and then resolve conflicts and schedule a chat, and then push me a brief ahead of the meeting.”
According to Srinivas, the ultimate vision is to turn the web browser into a sort of operating system—running tasks in the background all day to streamline the user’s schedule. While there’s still a way to go before reaching that point universally, he said Perplexity is close to realizing this goal in specific areas. If successful, he believes word-of-mouth adoption could fuel further growth.
“We nail those use cases, get the early adopters to love the product, and then ride the wave of progress and reasoning models,” he said. “That’s been the strategy.”
Srinivas is far from alone in raising concerns about AI’s disruptive potential for the job market. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios that AI could eliminate up to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, potentially pushing unemployment as high as 10% to 20%.
That warning, he emphasized, was meant for both policymakers and fellow AI developers.
“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” Amodei said. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it. … We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming.”
Also in May, LinkedIn’s Chief Economic Opportunity Officer Aneesh Raman noted that AI increasingly threatens the kinds of jobs that have traditionally served as stepping stones for young professionals. Venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee has gone further, calling forecasts that AI will displace 50% of jobs by 2027 “uncannily accurate.”
Still, there are signs of pushback and recalibration among companies that have embraced an “AI-first” philosophy.
At Klarna, for instance, despite ongoing AI investments, the company has come to value human interaction more deeply. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg in May that the fintech firm was preparing to hire more staff to ensure customers always have the option to speak with a live representative.
Similarly, Duolingo’s pivot to AI-led operations—announcing it would reduce reliance on contractors for tasks AI can perform—sparked strong backlash from users. A company spokesperson told Fast Company in May that Duolingo was “committed to using AI with human oversight, to help us deliver on our mission to make the best education in the world available to everyone.”