'AI May Pose A Serious Challenge To Our Self-Worth': Zoho Founder Sridhar Vembu

After having recently attended the AI Impact Summit 2026, Zoho Founder Sridhar Vembu noted how AI may become a serious challenge to one's self-worth.

Taking to X, the tech visionary said, "If our notion of self-worth comes from the economic value we add, or if it comes our intellectual pretense (*cough*), AI may pose a serious challenge to our self-worth."

Further, he noted that jobs embedded in value, passion, and care and not necessarily because they pay well will remain unaffected in an AI driven world.

"On the other hand no one takes up activities like taking care of children, teaching children, taking care of the elderly, coming back to farming leaving a well-paying job, going into the forest as rangers because they love the forest, local temple priests who do the daily rituals even when no one shows up at the temple, classical musicians who practise daily and perform for even very small crowds - none of them do it because those activities pay well," he said.  

Amid scalable and sustainable artificial intelligence growth in the 'Global South', Vembu mentioned, "Humanity may organize itself more towards such activity."

Earlier, Sridhar Vembu had dispelled fears linked to jobs losses as a direct result of widespread AI deployment across the South Asian nation.

"Nobody can really know what's truth here, the truth has to be experienced over time. In the past technological revolutions such as the industrial revolution destroyed many jobs. In the textile sector, weaving jobs were destroyed, however, many other jobs around textiles were born, which one could not have imagined when machines were first invented," he said.

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"If the answer to this is that humans will be in control, then ultimately the human economy will dominate, and humans will be selling it other humans and getting paid for it," he added.