Salesforce CEO: AI is ‘the most important tech in any lifetime’

Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff declared in an interview with AP news that artificial intelligence (AI) “is not just the most important technology of our lifetime, but probably the most important in any lifetime”.

In terms of whether AI is going to be good or bad, Benioff noted: “It’s what we do with them that matters. Nobody wants a Hiroshima moment to understand how dangerous AI is.”

Responsible use of AI needs to be top of mind for everyone – tech companies producing and selling this technology, businesses buying and using it, individuals using it at work and in their personal lives, and governments and regulators.

While generative AI has transformed how ordinary people are using AI in their personal and professional lives, Benioff predicted that more innovation and evolution is to come.

“We are going to move into something that is maybe more multisensory, where these agents are going to be more aware of us and we are going to be more aware of them.”

Benioff continued: “We are on the threshold of a dramatic change in the way we work with computers.

“We are going to work side by side with them. And, in many cases, they are going to augment or extend what we have been doing.”

Benioff is not alone in this viewpoint. There’s some consensus from experts that while AI it will disrupt jobs – and lead to some job losses – the main impact the technology will have on the world of work is in complementing and augmenting humans, and helping them do their jobs better.

However, Salesforce’s CEO goes further by noting that AI is “going to be taking actions without our knowledge”. Companies, beware.

Work is “never going back to way it was”

This AI revolution, and the wider tech boom, has completely transformed the world of work for good, according to Benioff.

He told AP: “We are all using technology to find more freedom in our lives.

“Things are back to normal, but people do go to the office less. And that is not going to change. We are never going back to the way it was.”

Salesforce has fully embraced hybrid and flexible work in this post-pandemic world. Although it has slightly rolled back on 2022 commitments to completely trust teams to make their own decisions, unlike some of its tech giant peers, Salesforce has resisted a return to office mandate and instead created guidelines.

The company’s working location guidelines are role specific – there are still fully remote roles at Salesforce – but so-called office-flexible teams have been assigned to one office location, and work in-person three days a week.

Customer-facing teams are expected to work together or with customers four days a week, while the situation is more flexible for technical teams (10 days per quarter).

Salesforce, like most of the rest of the tech sector, has been forced to do layoffs over the past year.

In response to the question, what happened? Benioff shared: “Companies were too optimistic, including ours. And we unfortunately had to make adjustments, some that we did not want to make.

“I think everyone got hypnotized during the pandemic that that was what the future was going to look like. And when the pandemic was over, there was a snapback.”

Despite this, Benioff remains optimistic about the future of the tech sector.

“I have never been more excited about the future of the industry and the potential to help all our customers. This technology revolution that is going on in artificial intelligence and the importance of bringing trust to AI is a real call to arms,” he concluded.