Despite his enthusiasm, he acknowledged the disruptive impact of tech on labour. — Bloomberg
Artificial intelligence now performs up to half the internal work at Salesforce, according to founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who says his company is spearheading a "digital labor revolution" that will reshape the future of work.
"AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce now," Benioff said during an episode of The Circuit with Emily Chang last week, citing software engineering and customer service as key areas transformed by automation.
He added that the company's internal use of AI has helped reduce hiring needs while boosting productivity.
Benioff's bullish stance on AI is centred around a new platform called Agent Force, which deploys "digital employees" to handle tasks ranging from customer service and analytics to marketing and branding.
Salesforce seeks to reach one billion active agents by the end of the year.
"It's the fastest-growing, most exciting thing we've ever done," Benioff said, noting that more than 5,000 customers are already using the technology.
Benioff said the company's flagship AI agent has reached 93% accuracy in customer interactions, including with major clients such as Walt Disney Co. Still, he emphassed the importance of vigilance, especially around security and misinformation.
"You have to be completely paranoid," he said.
At 59, Benioff continues to embrace his role as a tech industry disruptor. A self-taught programmer who sold his first software product as a teenager, he worked under Larry Ellison at Oracle before founding Salesforce in 1999.
The idea for the company, he said, came to him while swimming with dolphins in Hawaii.
Salesforce went on to revolutionise enterprise software by delivering it via the Internet, pioneering the software-as-a-service model and becoming a global CRM leader with clients including Apple, Amazon and Boeing.
Now, Benioff says the San Francisco firm is transforming for the AI era.
Despite his enthusiasm, he acknowledged the technology's disruptive impact on labour.
Salesforce has already cut more than 1,000 jobs, and Benioff predicts that today's CEOs may be the last to manage entirely human workforces. He estimates AI could unlock US$3 trillion (RM12 trillion) to US$12 trillion (RM50 trillion) in global productivity.
Benioff said he meditates daily, weaves Hawaiian spiritualism into company culture, and once spent more than US$20mil (RM84mil) to license physicist Albert Einstein's likeness for Salesforce's AI branding.
He proudly describes himself as "the Taylor Swift of tech."
To illustrate his embrace of AI, Benioff said he co-wrote the company's latest business plan with an AI assistant – an exercise he described as making the CEO job "less lonely."
He is also blunt when it comes to competition. Benioff dismissed Microsoft's Copilot as "repackaged ChatGPT," drawing a contrast with Salesforce's more autonomous Agent Force platform.
He supports breaking up Big Tech, saying the industry has "probably been too big."
While facing criticisms over shifting diversity initiatives and political opportunism, Benioff remains committed to corporate responsibility.
You can "do well and do good," he said, referring to Salesforce's 1-1-1 model, which pledges 1% of company equity, product and employee time to philanthropic causes.
As for his hometown, Benioff rejects claims of San Francisco's decline.
"I think it's a false narrative," he said. "The people who are creating the future are here. This isn't the first gold rush we've been through." – San Francisco Chronicle/Tribune News Service
