The CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, who is known to highlight the transformative power of artificial intelligence, said that AI can replace us or improve us.
He thinks it must be the latter.
“As CEO of a technological company that helps customers deploy AI Financial time OP-ED Thursday. “At the same time, I believe that humans must stay at the center of history.”
It is because humans have a “superpower” that AI does not do, namely the ability to express compassion or really connect with other people, he added.
These only human advantages have given birth to the greatest inventions of history as well as the training of companies that seek to solve the problems of the world.
Even with the emergence of AI agents who can learn and perform tasks for us, Benioff argued that they will improve, not humans.
However, he recognized that AI stimulates immense changes between companies, including his. For example, AI agents managed by humans solve 85% of customer service requests, and 25% of the new net code for research and development was generated by AI in the first quarter.
“Jobs will change, and as for each major technological change, some will disappear – and new ones will emerge,” added Benioff. “At Salesforce, we have known this first hand: our organization is radically reshaped.”
Thousands of employees have been redeployed and hiring for engineering roles has been largely on break, he said. In fact, 51% of Salesforce hiring in the first quarter was internal.
His comments arise as he and other technological CEOs have recently stressed how much AI is doing now. Last month, Benioff said that AI was up to 50% of all work at Salesforce, in key functions such as engineering, coding and customer support. In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20% to 30% of the technology giant code was written by AI. And in April, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, said that more than 30% of his business code was generated by AI.
Benioff also predicted to the Davos World Economic Forum at the start of this year that today’s CEO cohort will be the last to direct human workforce.
Meanwhile, there are already signs that AI is starting to destroy entry -level jobs that recent university graduates need to launch their careers.
Tony Fadell, the co-inventor of Apple’s iPod, added to these warnings earlier this week, saying to Bloomberg TV, all junior level jobs in any industry are at high risk of AI and that schools must train students to be more like intermediate level employees.
“Companies will not train their workers as they did, saying:” I will take interns and these things, “he said.” They need to have experience and experience – not with tools – but a work experience before going to the labor market. ”
For his part, Benioff underlined in the FT Humans are not helpless, arguing that we can choose to guide and associate with AI.
On the other hand, assuming that AI will simply replace humans means “we are starting to write the future”.
“AI is not fate,” he said. “We have to choose judiciously. We must intentionally conceive. And we have to keep humans at the center of this revolution. ”
