Is AI Hype Cooling Off Now? Zoho's Sridhar Vembu Lists Its Seven 'Actual' Uses

Zoho cofounder and chief scientist Sridhar Vembu isn’t happy with the ‘overhype’ created about the artificial intelligence, saying the AI bubble is deflating now. He said the corporate customers and analysts are not terribly excited about the recent developments of AI.

Vembu, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), said “I am in the camp that overhyping anything is a bad idea. I am personally enthusiastic about some technologies but I will not overhype them.

The tech expert also cited two examples to explain the impact of overhyping any technological advancement, specifically AI: One, Microsoft reportedly canceled US data center leases due to oversupply concerns. Two, Satya Nadella cautioned against overly optimistic projections about AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence) in particular.

He further listed seven areas in which AI is actually useful today. These include, speech-to-text or text-to-speech, image recognition, authentication based on photos or videos, character recognition for extracting meta data, spam detection, security threat analysis, indentifying patterns in data, programmer assistance via code generation, marketing content generation, and more.

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Among these, Vembu is excited about only three uses of AI --- security threat analysis, programmer assistance, and data pattern identification. According to him, AI can provide “actions” or “workflows” in these areas, while calling for more research and development (R&D) work on the same.

"In that sense autonomous AI agents are like self-driving cars: don't get too taken by the hype but engineers in the trenches are making progress," he added.

Zoho offers a wide range of SaaS products, including Zoho CRM, Zoho Mail, Zoho Books, Zoho Workplace, and Zoho One, catering to business operations such as customer relationship management, email, accounting, collaboration, and enterprise resource planning. Zoho is known for its focus on privacy, bootstrapped growth, and commitment to innovation.

The Indian multinational technology company that provides cloud-based software solutions for businesses. It was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas as AdventNet and later rebranded as Zoho in 2009.

It has been valued at Rs 1,03,760 crore by Axis Bank’s Burgundy Private and Hurun India as per their fourth edition of ‘500 Most Valuable Non-State Run Companies in India.’ This is a 58% increase from Zoho’s previous valuation of Rs 65,700 crore.