Marc Benioff warns that AI, whereas helpful, is overhyped and partly blames Microsoft

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Marc Benioff warns that AI, whereas helpful, is overhyped and partly blames Microsoft


One of many tech trade’s greatest hype males, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, needs you to know that he’s psyched about generative AI, however even he doesn’t assume it may possibly do what its greatest proponents say it can do. And he (not surprisingly) blames Microsoft.

A month after Salesforce’s huge tech convention, Dreamforce, throughout which Benioff endlessly pitched, pumped, and lauded AI — a minimum of because it’s utilized in Salesforce’s personal merchandise — he’s now on a setting-expectations tour. And he’s trash speaking his greatest competitor and arch rival, Microsoft. He lately appeared on the podcast Speedy Response, hosted by former Quick Firm editor-in-chief Bob Safian. 

Speaking about AI’s potential, he mentioned, “I’ve by no means been extra enthusiastic about something at Salesforce, perhaps in my profession.”

However he additionally warned that “prospects have been informed issues about enterprise AI, perhaps AI general, that aren’t true,” he mentioned. “I believe Microsoft has accomplished an amazing disservice to not solely our entire trade however the entire AI analysis that has been accomplished.”

Benioff had unfavorable issues to say particularly about Microsoft Copilot’s accuracy and usefulness. He even in contrast Copilot to Clippy, Microsoft’s broadly panned Nineties speaking paperclip cartoon that was alleged to be an assistant to Microsoft Workplace customers.

“We could have heard from these AI monks and priestesses of those LLM mannequin firms and Microsoft and others about AI is now curing most cancers, and AI is curing local weather change, and all of us need to plug into these nuclear energy vegetation to get these information facilities. None of that is true,” Benioff mentioned. 

He was doubling down on a remark he made on X, the place he mentioned, “LLMs (Massive Language Fashions) usually are not the direct bridge to AGI, and far of AI’s present potential is solely oversold. AI isn’t but curing most cancers or fixing local weather change as pundits declare.”

That was a dig at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Earlier this summer season, he postulated that with AI-enhanced well being tech, “[m]aybe a future model will assist uncover cures for most cancers,” Altman mentioned on the Aspen Concepts Competition, reported Newsweek.

Benioff additionally cited some analysis by Gartner about Microsoft Copilot. A Gartner report launched in April referred to as “The Prime 10 ‘Gotchas’ of Copilot for Microsoft 365” discovered that solely 1 / 4 of the organizations doing Copilot pilot applications are at present planning a large-scale rollout. That’s really a fairly good quantity, given how younger this tech is and the way sluggish enterprises could be to undertake it. That mentioned, Gartner additionally concluded that as Copilot improves, so will enterprise adoption.

Microsoft would possibly level to market analysis carried out by Forrester that cited a slew of bottom-line advantages for small companies which are utilizing Copilot. Forrester discovered that Copilot led to a tiny uptick in income, whereas lowering working prices and rushing new-hire onboarding, based mostly on a survey of 266 small firms. Nevertheless, we should observe that this analysis was paid for by Microsoft. Make of that what you’ll.

Nonetheless, Benioff has some extent that the GenAI now we have as we speak, whereas generally mind-blowing, is just not prepared to interchange human employees usually. True, the podcast-making capabilities of Google’s NotebookLM — which may create bantering AI-generated hosts that designate materials — is kind of the social gathering trick. But, it’s onerous to see how such a factor will straight cut back the form of soul-sucking menial labor duties that bathroom down most company jobs. 

Benioff can also be spot-on that the one space the place GenAI does appear to be doing a screaming good job with enterprises is AI brokers. That ties in properly with the Salesforce product he’s been hyping these days, Agentforce. A slew of different tech firms and startups are engaged on AI agent applied sciences, too, from constructing use case-specific ones, to providing platforms the place companies can construct their very own. Only a few examples embrace OutRival, Atlassian’s Rovo AI, and Sierra, the startup based by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and Google vet Clay Bavor.

AI brokers are particularly discovering their manner into customer support, starting from a lot improved web site chat bots to subject service guides. Examples embrace Zingtree, Talla, or Neuron7. Salesforce has choices right here, too.

AI brokers are additionally discovering success with gross sales, particularly prospecting, the high-rejection fee cold-calling and emailing that’s the backside tier of each gross sales group. Examples embrace AI Regie.ai, AiSDR, Artisan, and 11x.ai.

“I believe we’ll have greater than a billion brokers working from Salesforce throughout the subsequent 12 months,” Benioff speculated, based mostly, he mentioned, on getting about 10,000 prospects at his tech convention to attempt it.

Nevertheless, it’s additionally price stating that there are different areas the place LLMs are already valued and the place Microsoft, particularly, does have recreation. Software program programmers and engineers more and more use them to assist them take a look at and debug or generate code examples, together with with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot. Numerous startups are providing AI coding assistants as effectively, like JetBrains and Proceed, to call only a couple. 

Microsoft’s shut relationship with OpenAI signifies that its cloud, Azure, is a well-liked selection for enterprises which are utilizing LLM fashions to construct their very own GenAI apps, too. So, Microsoft’s tentacles into GenAI prolong far past having Phrase write paperwork, having Excel whip up charts, or having Groups transcribe conferences. 

On the similar time, when the people who find themselves actually speaking up AI to promote their very own AI merchandise warn that the AI is overhyped, it’s protected to say that AI is overhyped. 

“It’s about managing expectations whereas harnessing AI’s capabilities,” Benioff defined.



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