Sridhar Vembu advises coders to find alternative careers amid AI boom: 'I don't say this in panic…'

Zoho's Sridhar Vembu has warned coders to look for alternative source of livelihood as the artificial intelligence technology gets better and better at generating new apps and websites without the user having any technical knowledge.

In a post on X, Vembu cited the rapidly improving capabilities of AI models like Anthropic's Claude which recently built an entire C compiler as proof that the technology industry is shifting rapidly. Notably, a C Compiler is a tool which translates human written C programming language code into machine readable instructions.

“At this point, it is best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this. I don't say this in panic, but with calm acceptance and embrace.” Vembu wrote in a post on X

Vembu was quoting a post by a user on X who claimed to have created a Bhagwad Gita app on App Store without knowing a single line of code.

The former Zoho CEO also said that he held a detailed sessions with Google's Gemini to figure out how the economy will be shaped by this AI revolution.

“It was like having an extremely intelligent economic philosopher debating you. I asked it to critique its own work and it did a fantastic job too.” Vembu said

“As Gemini and I developed see this, the future could unfold in two ways, depending on who owns and collects rent on this technology.” he added

Notably, the remarks by Vembu come shortly after he had criticized the hype around vibe coding by stating that the natural language prompt based coding oversimplifies a deeply layered craft and leads to an unsustainable technical debt.

Vembu had also gone on to have a public feud with Y Combinator CEO Gary Tan who claimed that Zoho's business would be the first to be wiped away due to vibe coding.

“Vibe coding just piles up tech debt faster and faster until the whole thing collapses.” he had said then in a post on X

Vembu's predictions for the future of technology:

Vembu further noted that the rise of AI systems could lead to two kinds of future, depending on who "collects rent" on this technology: an optimistic future and a pessimistic future.

In his optimistic prediction for the future, Vembu states that the technology would become redundant and trivial like the digital watches of today. He says this will lead to an increased focus by humans on ‘life, family, soil, water, nature, art, music, culture, sports, festivals and faith’

In his pessimistic vision, Vembu predicts that the technology would lead to ‘centralized control’.