Sridhar Vembu warns companies against sharing sensitive data with AI firms

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has warned companies to be careful about sharing their important business information with major artificial intelligence (AI) companies. He said this could expose valuable trade secrets.

Vembu shared a post on X quoting Fields Medal-winning mathematician Terence Tao, who warned that researchers may stop sharing new and promising ideas openly because of the growing use of AI.

"The incentives may now be pointing in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community," Tao said, who is one of the world's leading mathematicians and also a heavy AI user.

He warned that this could reverse centuries of traditions of open science and cause serious long-term damage to the field.

Vembu said the concern was not limited to mathematicians or scientists. He argued that companies with valuable know-how, intellectual property (IP) and trade secrets should also be careful about sharing such information with frontier AI labs.

He pointed to the pharmaceutical industry as an example. According to Vembu, several major pharma companies already have their own AI models, often built using open-source models. This allows them to use AI while keeping sensitive information about new drug molecules and the processes they are working on within their own systems.

Vembu said this approach is justified because sharing such information with large AI companies could expose valuable business knowledge.

He also argued that companies do not necessarily need to rely on major AI labs to build such systems. According to him, AI models are becoming easier to train and cheaper to operate which is making it more practical for businesses to develop and run their own models.

"Your company's know-how belongs in your own AI model. Fortunately they are easy to train and becoming cheaper to run too," he said.

His comments come as more companies and researchers worry about sharing private information with AI tools. This is especially important for companies working on new technology, medicines and other research that could be valuable to their business.

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