Marc Benioff’s Outlook on Artificial Intelligence and Employment Prospects

Over the past 25 years, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has stood out as a rare example in the tech industry. While he continues to lead the company that revolutionized software sales through online subscriptions, other billionaire founder/CEOs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Larry Page of Google, and Reed Hastings of Netflix have chosen to step down from their pioneering companies that emerged in the 1990s.

Benioff, 58, isn’t ready to leave Salesforce just yet, even though he’s amassed an $8 billion fortune and has just gone through a challenging phase that may have led many CEOs to aim for an exit. In January, Benioff decided to lay off 8,000 Salesforce workers after overseeing a pandemic-driven expansion that included a nearly $28 billion purchase of the popular workplace tool Slack, and then grappled with an investor backlash caused by a nearly 50 percent drop in the company’s stock last year. The stock has recouped most of its losses this year thanks to a rebound in revenue growth.

The Associated Press recently sat down with Benioff for an interview that has been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: How does the landscape look to you when the pandemic fades into the rearview mirror?

A: When I look back at 2019, we had really gone through three huge technology waves: cloud computing, mobile and social. And now we’re going into the fourth wave, which is probably the most important artificial intelligence (AI), which is not only the most important technology of our lifetime, but probably the most important of any lifetime. It will be a new world of technology as exciting as all the other worlds combined.

Q: Is this on the same scale as the development of nuclear bombs in WWII?

A: Technologies are never good or bad, what matters is what we do with them. No one wants a Hiroshima moment to realize how dangerous AI is. We want to get our heads around the huge implications of the technology we work with. And it will require a multi-stakeholder approach – companies, governments, NGOs and others setting the guidelines for this technology.

Q: Have you been surprised or concerned about how quickly things seem to be moving since the launch of the ChatGPT bot late last year?

A: We are moving from a generative ChatGPT phase, which is the first phase, to a phase where we are facing agents that are quite alive and aware and capable of such massive actions. These are called multimodal agents, meaning they can go from text to speech to video. And then we’re going to move into something that’s maybe more multisensory, where these agents are going to be more aware of us and we’re going to be more aware of them.

None of us are really ready for this because none of us have experienced this before. We are on the cusp of a dramatic change in the way we deal with computers. We intend to work side by side with them. And in many cases they add to or extend what we’ve done. They take action without our knowledge.

Q: Salesforce is one of many technology companies that now allows employees to work remotely at least a few days a week. How has the pandemic changed the nature of work?

A: We all use technology to find more freedom in our lives. Things are back to normal, but people are visiting the office less. And it won’t change. We will never go back to them the way they were.

Q: The tech industry expanded rapidly during the pandemic, then abruptly reversed course with layoffs that included Salesforce. What happened?

A: Companies were too optimistic, including us. And unfortunately we had to make changes that we didn’t want to make. I think everyone was hypnotized during the pandemic that this is what the future will look like. And when the pandemic was over, the snapback came.

Q: Have you given much thought to how long you want to stay as CEO of Salesforce?

A: I think about my career every day, but I have never been more excited about the future of the industry and the opportunity to help all of our customers. This ongoing technological revolution in AI and bringing trust to AI is a true call to arms.