London
CNN
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Today’s chief executives are the last generation to manage an all-human workforce as companies increasingly embrace artificial intelligence, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Thursday.
“From now on … we will manage not only human workers but also digital workers,” he said on a panel at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Benioff offered a recent example from his business.
Salesforce software has been used to help run the annual conference in Davos for more than a decade, he said. But this year, for the first time, the San Francisco-based tech company added an “AI agent” to its app for Davos attendees to help them decide which panels to attend.
Echoing comments made at last year’s meeting, As for AI augmenting — but not replacing — human workers, Benioff also said Thursday that AI and humans can work together “to create higher levels of success.”
“AI is becoming our partner to help us run our lives, to help us run our businesses, to help us deliver a new level of productivity,” he added. Those productivity gains can be achieved without a large “human workforce,” he added. ”
In recent years, there has been growing concern over AI’s ability to replace human workers. The release of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022, powered by generative AI, demonstrated the technology’s power to generate detailed, human-like responses to user prompts – for example in the form of essays and articles. – in seconds.
Speaking with Benioff, Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of AI juggernaut Anthropic, said: “My guess is that by 2026 or 2027 we will have AI systems that are better than humans at almost everything. ”
Earlier this month, a survey by the World Economic Forum found that 41% of employers globally plan to reduce their workforce by 2030 as AI automates certain tasks. According to a survey published in The Future of Jobs Report77% are also planning to reskill and upskill their current workforce between 2025-2030 so they can work better with AI.
Striking an optimistic note, the report states that the primary impact of technologies such as generative AI on jobs may lie in their ability to “augment” their capabilities through “human-machine collaboration,” rather than outright replacement. As, “especially given the continued importance of ‘human-centered skills.’
On Wednesday, Benioff also commented on the $500 billion AI infrastructure project announced in the United States this week, saying it only signaled the start of “trillions” more investment.
“You’re seeing the beginning of what will be one of the greatest levels of investment in the history of the world,” he told CNN’s Richard Quest in Davos. “Because it’s an opportunity for us to completely change how we do everything.”
