AI Does 50% Work At Salesforce, But Mass Layoffs Not On Cards Yet: CEO Marc Benioff

Artificial Intelligence (AI) performs a lot of work at Salesforce, but the company has no mass lay-off plans yet, CEO Marc Benioff has said.

On The Circuit With Emily Chang podcast for Bloomberg, he spoke at length about the transformative power of AI, but added it can either replace humans or enhance them, and he believes in the latter. AI will support and improve human work, instead of taking it away or replacing people completely, he added.

With the advancement of AI in the tech industry, Mr Benioff said that some jobs will disappear but new ones will also be created. He explained that Salesforce has already undergone major changes, such as thousands of employees in his company being given new roles and there being a pause on hiring engineering jobs for now.

According to Fortune, in the first quarter, the San Francisco-based software company has redeployed more than 50 percent of the people already working with them, he said.

His company has created an AI tool that can do tasks like customer service without human supervision with 93 percent accuracy, Mr Benioff said.

Humans have led to the formation of some of the greatest innovations and also created several businesses that seek to solve real-world problems, he said. They possess a "superpower" that AI lacks, which is the capacity to show empathy or establish genuine connections with others, Mr Benioff added, reported Fortune.

"All of us have to get our heads around this idea that AI can do things that we were doing, he added, stating, "We can move on to do higher-value work."

Apple iPod founder Tony Fadell also stressed the importance of being hands-on with the tools, instead of just learning about them in theory. He said that companies nowadays are not hiring freshers like they used to but are looking for those who already have experience.

He said that junior-level jobs, like entry-level or fresher jobs, in all industries are at high risk as businesses are no longer willing to spend time training freshers or interns.

Last month, Mr Benioff said that AI does up to 50 percent of all work at Salesforce, including critical tasks like customer service, development, and engineering.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated in May that 20 percent to 30 percent of the company's code was generated by Artificial Intelligence.

In April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said more than 30 percent of his company's coding work was done by Artificial Intelligence.

In May, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that within the next 12 to 18 months, AI will soon be doing most of the coding work for his company's Llama Project. Currently, AI can help in auto-completing a section of code and soon will become even better than the top coders, he added.