4 min readNew DelhiAug 18, 2025 08:58 AM IST
First published on: Aug 17, 2025 at 11:52 AM IST
Roughly three years after ChatGPT set off the generative AI boom, many are still trying to figure out how to make the technology a useful part of their everyday work. Even CEOs and top executives of major companies are reportedly grappling with this question even as their own employees are mandated to use AI to make businesses more efficient and competitive
In this context, Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder and chief scientist of Zoho Corporation, recently shared a few pointers on how AI is used today internally at the multinational enterprise software company.
“AI is a very good debating partner to have and we can use them to debate each other too. I often take the output of one AI and ask another AI to critique it and that deepens my understanding,” Vembu said in a post on X.
Acknowledging the vast potential of AI to accelerate learning, streamline workflows, and enhance product experiences, Vembu also expressed a word of caution about over-reliance or misuse of AI as it can lead to the reversal of expected productivity gains.
“I use AI chat tools daily, at least 2-3 sessions a day. So I would count myself as a moderate to heavy user. I have the top 5 apps installed in my phone and I use all of them,” he said. “We continue to run a lot of experiments, and I will revise my opinion if and when facts change on the ground,” Vembu added.
Notably, Vembu said that like many users, he too uses traditional web browsers and search engines a lot less. “AI helps me learn faster. It is a much better search engine in that sense. My web search has gone down 80% as a direct result,” he said.
This is part of a larger shift in user behaviour where more and more people are turning to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, instead of Google Search, to look up information online. Vembu also said that Elon Musk-owned xAI’s Grok chatbot and its integration on X (formerly Twitter) shows that AI can enhance product experience.
How to (not) use AI
According to Vembu, he does not support the use of AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to create new content. “AI can help customer support agents do their work faster but it is unwise to let AI replace human agents. It is also unwise for a human to copy paste AI text and send it to a customer, hiding the fact that it came from AI,” he said.
Weighing in on the debate around vibe-coding, Vembu said that code generated using AI tools “requires a full round of review for compliance, privacy and security, and those are neither easy nor fun for humans to do.”
“If any programmer submits AI generated code without doing all this, they are failing at their job. Doing all of the above may destroy much of the “productivity gains” in generating code. In some cases, AI may even slow us down,” he further said.
Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder and chief scientist of Zoho Corporation. (File photo) 
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