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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Marc Benioff’s vision for the future of AI agents, how they could revolutionize work, and what it means for businesses to create their own futures.
Highlights
00:16 — Fascinating discussion earlier this week from Salesforce, and particularly its CEO, Marc Benioff, on the Q3 earnings call, where that overwhelming subject was the rise of AI agents and what Salesforce calls Agentforce.
01:11 — Benioff talked about the rise of what he refers to as digital labor, that this is going to give us an unlimited work supply to handle things that can often be tiring to humans. He said, we are at the edge of a revolutionary transformation here, with agents taking over and really dramatically changing the nature of work.
02:02 — What really are these agents going to do? Benioff said, he recently, on a scuba diving trip ruptured his Achilles tendon. He was engaging with a hospital he’s used a long time. There were a lot of back-and-forth phone calls. In one of these detail-oriented scheduling calls, he thought, “How much is this costing the healthcare provider to be on this phone call?”
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03:18 — He said this is an ideal case for agents to come in and handle it. Instead of some of these multiple phone calls that cost probably $100, Agentforce could probably do this for $1.50. Is it possible that one of the tangible outcomes of this new rise of AI agents is the ability to slash some costs by close to 100%?
04:20 — Before we wrap up here, I want to point out that what’s so intriguing about this is the question “How can I use this to help liberate my people to do more, to make my company more efficient, and let people do higher-value work?”
