Sridhar Vembu on AI automation economy: Why robots won’t kill jobs, but may bankrupt the middle class

If robots take your job, don’t panic — just be ready to cook, care, sing or farm. That’s the future envisioned by Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu, who believes artificial intelligence won’t bring widespread unemployment, but could unbalance the global economy if policymakers stay passive.

In a post on X, Vembu dismissed the popular doomsday theory that machines will soon take over all jobs. “On the subject of AI and jobs: Hypothetically, if all software development were to be automated — I want to emphasise that we are nowhere close to that goal — and all software engineers such as myself are out of work, it is not like human beings will have nothing to do,” he wrote.



Instead, he argued that the real challenge will be economic: if machines produce everything, how will people — with no steady incomes — be able to afford what’s made?

Machines might flood markets, but who will buy?

Automation, Vembu said, will cause a massive drop in the price of goods and services. That sounds great at first. But the real worry, he pointed out, is access.

“The price of all the robot-made goods and all the AI-made and AI-supported software would drop massively and be close to zero or zero. Breathing air costs us zero and we don’t complain about it,” he wrote.

However, goods being cheap does not solve the deeper issue — how to ensure people have money in their pockets when robots and AI dominate production and businesses no longer need large human workforces.

The rise of Human-only professions

What happens when machines are better at building, coding, or even diagnosing illness? According to Vembu, that’s when uniquely human roles will shine.

“The remaining things humans do may get paid well — as an example, taking care of children, home cooked meals, nursing sick people, priests that minister to people, people who take care of soil health, water health, crop health and cattle health (we used to call them farmers), forest restoration specialists, local live performing musicians and so on may get paid much more,” he wrote.

This isn’t just a comforting vision — it’s a practical route, he believes, to circulate income more widely and ensure people can still access goods made in fully automated factories.

“That circulates income widely enough for people to afford the goods pouring out of highly automated factories,” Vembu added.

It’s not a tech problem, it’s a policy problem

The core issue, Vembu argues, lies not in machines replacing humans but in governments failing to ensure fair economic distribution. In short, this is a political economy problem.

“This is fundamentally an economic distribution problem, a problem of political economy and not purely a technological problem. One key part is for governments to crack down on monopolies, particularly tech monopolies,” he said.

Without regulation, he warned, large firms will keep the gains of automation for themselves — pushing prices down, but incomes down even faster. “Only that will ensure that the prices of goods reflect the very low cost of production arising from AI and automation,” he added.

The power to fix this lies with policy, not code

Vembu made it clear that the solution isn’t to slow AI — but to manage its economic fallout.

“As artificial intelligence and automation continue to reshape industries, the real challenge lies not in job displacement but in ensuring fair access to the wealth created by machines,” he said, according to The Economic Times.

He concluded with cautious hope: “There will be at least one country in the world that would get the political economy right.”

For Vembu, the future isn’t about machines replacing humans — it’s about whether governments can adapt fast enough to ensure no one is left behind.