Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu warns, ‘unwise to copy paste AI text’ – Here’s why

Artificial Intelligence is a major topic of discussions nowadays, with conversations often focusing on both its benefits and potential downsides.

The evolving role of AI in modern workplaces and business processes was the subject of a recent X (formerly twitter) post by Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder and chief scientist of Zoho Corporation.

While Vembu acknowledged that AI has immense potential to accelerate learning, streamline workflows, and enhance overall experiences, he cautions that over-reliance or misuse of AI can reduce, or even reverse, the expected productivity gains.

Use AI as a learning and debating partner

Vembu considers himself a moderate to heavy user of AI tools, using them at least 2-3 times a day. He highlights two key benefits of using AI:

• Faster learning: He considers AI as a powerful search engine, claiming that it has reduced his web searches by 80 per cent.

• A good debating partner: Vembu also utilizes AI as a debating partner. He even takes output from one AI and asks another AI to critique it, a method he says deepens his understanding of a topic.

Don’t use AI for copy pasting content

Despite the benefits, Vembu is clear about the dangers of over-reliance on AI, particularly when it comes to customer interactions and code generation.

• Using AI for customer support: While AI can support agents do their work faster, Vembu advises against using it to AI to completely replace human agents. He specifically warns against the practice of copy-pasting AI text and sending it to a customer without disclosing the fact that it came from AI.

• Using AI to generate code: Vembu also noted that AI generated code requires a full round of review for compliance, privacy and security. He states that if any programmer submits AI generated code without doing all this, they are failing at their job.

He said that it is important to review every output of AI even though it’s time-consuming. If a person fails to follow all of the above, it may destroy much of the "productivity gains" in generating code. In some cases, AI may even slow humans down.

The bottom line

Vembu encourages his company’s programmers to use AI as a tool for learning and intellectual push, but he urges a cautious approach for more critical tasks like customer communication and coding.

He concluded the post by saying, “we continue to run a lot of experiments, and I will revise my opinion if and when facts change on the ground.”