Today’s CEOs are the last to manage all-human workforces, says Marc Benioff

Today’s chief executives are the last generation to manage all-human workforces as companies increasingly adopt artificial intelligence, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Thursday.

Today’s chief executives are the last generation to manage all-human workforces as companies increasingly adopt artificial intelligence, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Thursday. “From this point forward… we will be managing not only human workers but also digital workers,” he said on a panel at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Benioff provided a recent example from his own business. He said Salesforce’s software had been used to help run the annual conference in Davos for more than a decade. But this year, for the first time, the San Francisco-based tech giant incorporated an “AI agent” into its app for Davos attendees to help them decide which panels to attend. Echoing comments he made at last year’s meeting, about AI augmenting — but not replacing — human workers, Benioff also said Thursday that AI and humans can work together “to create a higher level of success.” “AI is kind of becoming our partner to help us to run our lives, run our businesses, to help us to deliver a new level of productivity,” he added, suggesting that those productivity gains could be achieved without a larger “human workforce.”