Benioff: "Digital Labor" is the Future of Salesforce

The traditional vision of a company powered solely by human employees is rapidly becoming outdated, according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Speaking alongside investor Ray Dalio in a recent interview, Benioff predicted that today's CEOs will be the last to manage workforces exclusively composed of people, ushering in an era of "digital labor" powered by AI agents and robots. This bold prediction aligns with Salesforce's aggressive push into agent-based AI, signaling a fundamental shift in how companies operate and organize their work.

"It is the shift to digital labor. It is the three to twelve trillion dollar global shift where we are going to see digital labor takeover," Benioff stated in the interview. He described seeing examples of digital labor in action, even citing robot workers in restaurants in Singapore.

This vision is not just theoretical. Salesforce has already rebranded its Einstein Copilot platform as Agentforce and is now rolling out the second generation of its platform. Agentforce 2.0 promises a host of pre-built skills for "digital labor," such as building marketing campaigns, providing sales coaching, and improved reasoning capabilities.

"On my team, I can never hire enough product marketers to answer seller questions about pricing," Sanjna Parulekar, VP of product marketing at Salesforce, said. “I can’t have an army of 50 people that wake up every day doing that; it would be bad business.”

Agentforce 2.0 became fully available last month; Accenture, IBM, and Indeed have signed on to the platform, among others.

The Rise of AI Agents

The "digital labor" revolution hinges on the rise of AI agents – autonomous systems capable of performing tasks independently, rather than simply responding to user prompts like chatbots. Salesforce defines these agents as a "step change" from copilots, emphasizing their ability to proactively take action and function like teammates.

This rapid evolution has not gone unnoticed. The mention of terms like "agentic AI," "AI workforce," "digital labor," and "AI agents" during earnings calls increased 779% in the past year, according to AlphaSense data, showing that this shift is being widely acknowledged.

Implications for the Workforce

While Benioff paints an exciting picture of increased productivity and efficiency, the rise of "digital labor" raises crucial questions about the future of work and the potential impact on human employees.

Even with these concerns, many experts believe that while AI will disrupt the workforce, it is not expected to completely replace humans. Instead, it will augment the work most are already doing.

Competition and Caution

Salesforce is not alone in recognizing the potential of AI agents. Companies like Microsoft, SAP, and Asana are also developing agent-based products, creating a crowded and competitive field.

As AI adoption rises, there are also growing concerns, as seen with China's Manus AI agent, which boasts better personal assistant tasks than OpenAI's tools. Installing Manus on your computer gives it a lot of access to your computer, so it is important to be cautious.

Building agents that act independently on the internet is a big deal, one that poses major safety questions, and there needs to be a robust legal framework about what they can do and who is ultimately accountable.

However, the shift towards AI-integrated workforces appears to be gaining unstoppable momentum, driven by the potential for unprecedented efficiency and scale. As Benioff himself put it bluntly during the interview: "I've told my employees, my customers, I'll be the last CEO of Salesforce who only managed humans."