Generative AI is revolutionizing our lives across almost all areas, including medicine, entertainment, computing, and plenty more. However, the technology also ships with critical challenges like existential doom and augmenting jobs using AI. Salesforce, a key player in the AI landscape, is already using AI to automate workloads.
While in a recent interview with Bloomberg, CEO Marc Benioff revealed that AI is doing up to 50% of the work at Salesforce (via CNBC):
“All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher-value work.”
This news doesn't entirely come as a surprise, as Benioff previously indicated that Salesforce is "seriously debating" hiring engineers in 2025.
Job security is among the major concerns riddling most people as AI becomes more prevalent and gains broad adoption. Last year, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati indicated that AI would create new job opportunities while simultaneously killing some professions:
"Some creative jobs maybe will go away. But maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."
AI's razor-sharp cut on jobs
Interestingly, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates seemingly echoed similar sentiments, claiming that AI will replace humans for most things. However, he indicated that humans will have control over the narrative, preserving certain tasks for themselves. He joked that no one would like to watch computers playing baseball.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted that coding might already be dead in the water with the broad adoption of AI. He recommended that the future generation should chase down other future-proof career paths, including biology, farming, and manufacturing.
However, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claims that AI could potentially cut up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, leaving Gen Z out of work:
"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. It's a very strange set of dynamics, where we're saying: 'You should be worried about where the technology we're building is going.'"
We are going through a global labor shortage, we see all these declining birth rates. We understand that it's harder to hire, especially people right here in the United States in sales and service. And this is going to give us the ability to do more. And as an example of that, look at engineering.
Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff
Bill Gates claimed that biologists, energy experts, and coders would survive the brutal AI revolution because the fields are too complex to fully augment using AI.
However, AI isn't entirely bad. Microsoft's special June Work Trend Index report revealed that most employees are seemingly trapped in the infinite workday, forcing them to carry work home with little regard for official work hours.
Most employees who took part in the survey claimed that Sundays feel like "the new Monday" as they are constantly checking their emails and Microsoft Teams in preparation for the next day.
The report further revealed that AI could be leveraged to help employees strike a healthy work-life balance, by throwing mundane and repetitive tasks to AI, allowing sufficient time to handle more complex tasks.
"By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution."
It'll be interesting to see if corporations hop onto the AI bandwagon and deploy the technology across their workflows. It will also be interesting to see its overall impact on the workforce and whether it will create new opportunities for the professionals it is potentially set to replace.
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