Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I take a hard look at Marc Benioff’s claim that AI is already doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce and ask what that really means for the company’s 76,000 human employees.
Highlights
00:35 — In an interview, Marc Benioff said that at Salesforce, AI is doing anywhere from 30% to 50% of the work. The interviewer even asked, “Let me be sure I get that right,” and Marc said, “Yes, right now AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce.” If that’s the case, what happens to some of the 76,000 human workers at Salesforce?
01:27 — What does that mean for Salesforce and its customers looking at Salesforce as Customer Zero in this agentic AI world? What happens to the people who used to do the tasks that AI is now performing? Will all of those 76,000 people be kept and be expected to reframe, reset, and reestablish what the humans do, what the digital workers, agents and AI do?
02:15 — That is something I think there was a big opportunity for Benioff to describe, but he did not go into any detail. “This infusion of AI within big or mid-sized companies will allow humans to do ‘higher-value work.’” Okay, got it. But that phrase has been repeated so many times without any real detail. What is higher-value work? What does that mean?
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03:38 — I think there was a missed opportunity here for Benioff to explain: What do we mean by higher-value work? If you’re in marketing, it means this. If you’re in procurement, it means that. If you’re in legal, it means something else. If you’re in sales, service, product design, product development, or engineering what does that mean for the humans involved?
04:14 — But the figure Marc Benioff cited and how he delivered it left a big gap. What the heck is going on here? If we truly are entering a world of merged human and digital workers, do we still need 76,000 employees at Salesforce?
04:47 — This is a momentous time for leaders like Benioff, and I think we need to retire the phrase “higher-value work.” It’s become a crutch for too many executives. It’s time to ban that phrase and speak with real detail, clarity, and persuasion about what’s involved in that so-called higher-value work. I’m sure Salesforce and Marc Benioff have good answers.
