Months after announcing significant layoffs as part of its larger reorganization efforts, Salesforce appears to be making a hard pivot by stepping up its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate jobs and optimize workflows.
According to the company’s CEO, Marc Benioff, between 30 and 50 percent of Salesforce’s work is being done using AI. In an interview with Bloomberg, Benioff stated, “We all need to understand that AI can perform tasks that we were previously performing and that we can then go on to higher-value work.”
His comments coincide with the IT sector’s growing interest in AI as a means of reducing expenses, improving output, and reshaping labor forces. Salesforce reportedly let go of more than 1,000 workers earlier this year in an effort to reorganize the business around artificial intelligence.
Due to the tech CEOs’ own cautions about the technology’s disruptive potential, the impact of AI on jobs has become a contentious topic. AI may eliminate half of entry-level white-collar occupations within the next five years, according to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic.
Surveys and research studies have also expressed a similar worry. More than half of the jobs performed by entry-level positions, such as market research analysts, sales representatives, and graphic designers, could be replaced by AI, according to research from the American think tank The Brookings Institution.
Salesforce’s chief financial and operations officer, Robin Washington, stated in a previous interview with Bloomberg last month that the company is employing fewer software engineers as a result of artificial intelligence’s increased efficiency. She stated, “We see these as assistants, but they will enable us to hire fewer people and, hopefully, increase the productivity of our current team.”
Benioff referred to the employment of AI as a “digital labor revolution.” Additionally, he disclosed that Salesforce has achieved approximately 93% accuracy with AI. He claimed that using AI to achieve 100% accuracy was not feasible. Because they lack the data and metadata necessary to provide more accuracy, other vendors are at far lower levels, he continued.
While reducing their workforce, other tech firms like Swedish fintech Klarna and cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike are also investing in AI. According to Andy Jassy, CEO of the e-commerce behemoth, Amazon will also utilize AI to cut jobs.
As millions of students worldwide, especially in India, train to become software engineers and many even think about pursuing master’s degrees overseas, artificial intelligence is making it harder for them to get employment at the largest IT businesses in the world.
