Marc Benioff: AI Is Not Going to Destroy Office Jobs
Marc Benioff, CEO of financial technology company Salesforce, dismissed concerns about the widespread elimination of office jobs due to artificial intelligence at the Global AI Summit, stating: “That’s not my vision of AI.”
Speaking with Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, Benioff said, “Maybe others have an AI that I don’t have, but in the version I see, there is no mass firing of office workers. What we’re seeing is more of a fundamental augmentation of the workforce.”
Benioff’s perspective contrasts with predictions made by other key figures in the tech industry. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, had previously said that AI might eliminate half of all office jobs within the next five years.
Benioff believes it’s time to move past this “general fear”: “When I talk to our customers, I don’t hear them saying they’re firing employees because AI technology has improved. We need to let go of that fear.”
He noted that Salesforce has paused hiring in areas such as engineering, legal, and customer service this year to allow AI-driven productivity gains to emerge: “In engineering, the productivity opportunity that AI provides is incredible. So instead of hiring another thousand or two thousand engineers, we decided to first properly integrate this capability into our processes.”
Salesforce is increasing hiring in the sales department, as Benioff says customers are eager to adopt AI: “We’ll soon see an explosion in the number of small and medium-sized businesses, because their capabilities have been significantly amplified by AI.”
