AI may make 90% of workforce lose job-relevance in 10 years: CRED’s Kunal Shah

CRED founder and CEO Kunal Shah also shared that he has invested in about 80 fintech startups to date with an average ticket size of $50,000

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 industry-wide debate around the threat of job losses due to AI in the workforce.

“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 in a conversation with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan at the Global Fintech Fest 2023, on September 8.

Over the last few months, India Inc has been weighing in on the debate with some like Zerodha's Nithin Kamath advising companies to invest in upskilling for its employees to help them stay relevant in the age of fast-paced tech development.

Shah believes that while some argue that upskilling can save jobs, humans cannot upskill so quickly. “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.

This comes after the launch of the generative AI platform ChatGPT in November last year, which is capable of handling complex tasks on command and was seen as a tech landmark foreshadowing a potentially dramatic transformation of the workplace.

The CRED chief also 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.

During the session, he also shared that he has invested in about 80 fintech startups to date with an average ticket size of $50,000.

While Shah is hopeful of Indian founders succeeding in building an LLM (Large Language Model), he is bullish on the immense potential of entrepreneurs building products on the existing ones.

Also Read: Without loss-making companies, Indian fintech would not have seen such growth: CRED’s Kunal Shah

“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.