By Storyboard18
Publication Date: 2026-01-05 06:15:00
Artificial intelligence may be advancing rapidly, but its role remains fundamentally shaped by human judgement. Aravind Srinivas, chief executive of AI search startup Perplexity, has said that machines excel at solving problems but still rely on humans to decide which problems are worth pursuing. He argued that curiosity and question framing remain uniquely human strengths.
Speaking on a recent podcast with writer and entrepreneur Prakhar Gupta, Srinivas said AI systems are highly effective at solving, optimising and verifying solutions but do not independently identify meaningful problems. The episode was released earlier this week.
Srinivas stated that AI can assist humans in solving pre-defined challenges, but this is different from machines acting autonomously to decide what matters in the first place. He added that the advantage still lies with humans because it is people who recognise and define problems before any system attempts to solve them.
He further challenged the idea that AI possesses genuine curiosity, describing curiosity as a distinctly human trait that underpins scientific discovery and intellectual progress. Srinivas said AI systems do not pose questions or pursue ideas out of intrinsic interest, noting that human curiosity is what leads individuals to consider why certain problems or conjectures are worth exploring at all.
According to Srinivas, no AI system to date has demonstrated the ability to ask foundational questions purely out of curiosity, a…
