We’ve just created an internal AI policy at Zerodha to give clarity to the team, given the AI/job loss anxiety. This is our stance: “We will not fire anyone on the team just because we have implemented a new piece of technology that makes an earlier job redundant.” 1/8

In 2021, we’d said that we hadn’t found AI use cases when everyone was claiming to be powered by AI without any AI. With recent breakthroughs in AI, we finally think AI will take away jobs and can disrupt society.

Like Dr K said in a recent internal chat: “AI on its own won’t wake up and kill us all (for a while, at least!). The current capitalistic and economic systems will rapidly adopt AI, accelerating inequality and loss of human agency. That’s the immediate risk.”

In today’s capitalism, businesses prioritize shareholder value creation above stakeholders like employees, customers, vendors, the country, & the planet. Markets incentivize business leaders to prioritize profits over everything else; if not, shareholders vote them out.

Many companies will likely let go of employees and blame it on AI. In the process, companies will earn more and make their shareholders wealthier, worsening wealth inequality. This isn’t a good outcome for humanity.

While the hope is for governments worldwide to put some guardrails, it may be unlikely given the deglobalization rhetoric. No country would want to sit idle while another becomes more powerful on the back of AI.

It is unlikely that humans will be able to compete with intelligent machines in many walks of life. I have never done digital art, but it took me a few seconds to create this image of a CEO being replaced by an intelligent machine in the style of Da Vinci.

It’ll take a few years for us to see the real impact of AI on humanity. Businesses with financial freedom should, if nothing else, give their teams that helped build the business time to adapt.

I know some of this might sound weird coming from the CEO of a broking firm. 😬

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