Perplexity-CEO-Aravind-Srinivas’-advice-to-youngsters

Young Professionals Must Trade Doom- Scrolling for AI Skills to Thrive in 2025. 

In 2025, Perplexity AI CEO Arvind Srinivas gave a significant wakeup call to younger generations: “Reels won’t build your future.” With stark clarity, his message cuts through the digital noise. As social media distracts us all, AI technology is reshaping job and employment markets in a matter of months. 

This article will examine in some depth how Srinivas counsels youth to stay competitive through AI fluency-and why such proficiency is more important than ever today.

From Scroll to Skill

Srinivas advocates for trading time spent scrolling Instagram reels and TikTok for time learning AI tools. "You should spend less time doomscrolling and spending time away from your sleep scrolling Instagram, and spend more time using the AIs," he told the interviewer, Matthew Berman. He stressed that the existing job market is better for people using AI tools than the job market experienced by prior generations of people entering the job market. 

He remarked that as technology advances every three to six months, this model of change exerts pressure on human adaptability. Instead of consumption by individuals, Srinivas believes people need to be creators and experimenters. In a world driven by AI, attention is the new currency.

The Importance of AI Literacy

Perplexity AI was valued at approximately US$14 billion in mid-2025 and processes over 30 million daily queries, and it grew almost 20 percent month-on-month from May. Srinivas, Assurance's CEO, contends that AI literacy is shifting from voluntary to compulsory. "People who are really at the frontiers of using AIs will be more employable than people who are not. That is going to happen," he states, indicating hiring parameters have already changed in terms of degree requirements, internships, etc.

Confronting Automation and Grasping Entrepreneurship

Srinivas envisions that many of these roles, particularly routine knowledge work, will be subject to automation. He points to customer support reps and legal assistants, for example, as particularly at risk of automation. However, rather than presenting doom and gloom, he argues we need to prepare through innovation. 

Srinivas posited two possible ways forward: learning AI and joining companies that are embracing the technology, or starting a whole new thing. Entrepreneurs can create value out of AI as a tool to solve problems, and it might even engender new job lines themselves.

At Y Combinator’s AI Startup School, he warned the young founders not to be surprised when Big Tech intercepts up-and-coming companies and replicates their work. Still, in the long run, innovation and resilience prevail. “You’ve just got to live with that fear,” he explained. 

Comet Browser: A Real-World Example of AI as a Skill

Perplexity's new AI-powered browser, Comet, exemplifies Srinivas' vision of how skills in AI truly translate into productive work. Built on Chromium, it incorporates a built-in sidecar for summarizing, automating workflows, and communicating by natural-language prompts. 

In a recent update, Comet now allows users to place food orders through AI prompts, without apps, and that context of total automation indicates just to what degree tools can substitute entire job tasks.

From Distraction to Direction: Building AI-Ready Futures Start Now 

Aravind Srinivas delivers a bold and real statement: social media Scrolling will not support youth as they prepare for the future workplaces where AI will dominate. Rather, today, curiosity and experiment-based learning, along with upskilling in AI fluency, will be the most critical. Those who join AI-friendly organizations or start their own will shape the future.