Anthropic AI's job apocalypse: 'Don’t panic, embrace reality with calm acceptance': Zoho co-founder

"At this point, it is best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this," said Sridhar Vembu

Generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) Claude-maker Anthropic earlier this week announced Claude Cowork. 

It is a set of open-source plugins for non-tech savvy users. Unlike the standard AI chatbot, Claude Cowork is more advanced and is capable of analysing thousands of documents, perform multi-step tasks including reviewing legal contracts, if needed create a fool-proof Non-disclosure Agreements (NDA). It comes with several tailor-made plugins for several sectors such as legal, finance, and sales, with capability of automating complex business workflows.

Expectedly, the Claude Cowork launch created a panic in the Wall Street with stock prices of several companies in legal business, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fell worldwide.

Now, Anthropic announced new Claude Opus 4.6, latest software coding assistant that not only churn out codes, but also debug, learn from mistakes and course-correct to complete the tasks. It can become more efficient with each new task.

The company revealed that they had put Claude Opus 4.6 to test and asked to create C Compiler. For the uninitiated,  C Compiler is an advanced software tool used for translating complex C programming language code into machine-readable code (binary) that a computer's processor can directly execute.

To everyone surprise, Claude Ope 4.6 created around 16 AI agents and they together performed complex coding with minimal human intervention, and completed it in just two weeks. For comparison, depending on the complexity of C Compiler, it requires anywhere between 12 to 100 human programmers coding and testing for several months to deliver a fully-functional product.

This has created a panic in software technology sector worldwide. India’s software major Zoho Corp co-founder Sridhar Vembu has weighed in that people, who are making a living on coding, start considering alternative livelihoods.

“At this point, it is best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this. I don't say this in panic, but with calm acceptance and embrace,” Vembu said this in a response to Anish Moonka’s message on X platform. The latter who is investor banker with no coding experience showcased his Bhagvad Gita app created using Claude Max subscription in less than a week.

Vembu added that he had a philosophical conversation with Google Gemini Pro AI and was profoundly impressed with chatbot’s intelligence and came to conclusion that there is every chance of human coders becoming redundant in the near future.

“As Gemini and I developed see this, the future could unfold in two ways, depending on who owns and collects rent on this technology.  The optimist in me thinks that this technology will make most technological prowess by humans redundant and that would push tech to the background (all tech become trivial, like digital watches today) and we then get to focus on life, family, soil, water, nature, art, music, culture, sports, festivals and faith (faith is important), and that is best done in small close-knit rural communities. I live a life like this today and if we solve rural poverty, I consider this a very good life. The pessimistic dystopian vision is centralized control,” concluded Vembu.

The landscape in the software technology is changing in rapid pace and many experts want coders to upskill themselves with AI advancements and become a valuable asset or else risk getting the pink slips.

As per the latest report, more than 50 per cent of coding in Google's search engine algorithms is now done by gen AI tools.

It will take a lot of effort for people to stay up to date on gen AI, which progresses rapidly every passing week and there is an inevitable scenario where people with no AI skills will lose jobs.

In 2025, Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas said "The human race has never been extremely fast in adapting. We are good at adaptation, but this (gen AI) is testing the limits of how fast we can adapt, especially with a piece of technology as gen AI, which is evolving every three to six months. So, it is taking a toll on the people, and some give up. Whatever the educational tools we build of current models of gen AI for people will become irrelevant in just six months from now," Srinivas noted.

"I hope people try their best. That's all I can say. Don't take this lightly. Spend less time doom-scrolling on Instagram. Spend more time with AI tools, not because we want you to use our (Perplexity) tools, but add value to the new society," Srinivas concluded

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech