Ideas
By Marc Benioff
November 25, 2024 7:00 AM EST
Marc Benioff is the chair and CEO of Salesforce and the owner of TIME.
Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed advances in AI that have captured our imaginations with unprecedented capabilities in language and ingenuity. And yet, as impressive as these developments have been, they’re only the opening act. We are now entering a new era of autonomous AI agents that take action on their own and augment the work of humans. This isn’t just an evolution of technology. It’s a revolution that will fundamentally redefine how humans work, live, and connect with one another from this point forward.
Today, we’re already used to “predictive AI”–which analyzes data to provide recommendations, forecasts and insights–and “generative AI,” which learns from data and uses patterns to seamlessly generate text, images, music and code. Agents are software components that go far beyond this. They can perform tasks independently, make decisions and even negotiate with other agents on our behalf. And unlike the traditional tech transformations of the past which required years of costly infrastructure buildout, these new AI agents are easy to build and deploy, unlocking massive capacity.
This is a new horizon with radical implications. For the first time, technology isn’t just offering tools for humans to do work. It’s providing intelligent, scalable digital labor that performs tasks autonomously. Instead of waiting for human input, agents can analyze information, make decisions, and take action independently, adapting and learning as they go.
Take, for example, a large retailer during the upcoming holiday season. Traditionally, human workers or pre-programmed software might handle customer inquiries or inventory updates. But now, intelligent digital agents can respond to customer questions in real time, monitor stock levels, reorder inventory, and even coordinate with shipping providers—all without human intervention. These agents are enabling an entirely new scale of operations that was previously not possible.
This shift to intelligent digital labor is already unlocking capacity across industries. It’s no longer constrained by human availability or physical limits, allowing businesses to scale their operations while driving down costs and improving responsiveness, or by geographical limits — opening opportunities preciously limited by location.
Like any change of this magnitude, the shift to agents comes with clear challenges and understandable fears. We need to make sure AI systems are built with trust, accountability, fairness, and transparency as core values. We need to make sure, as AI transforms how we work, that we invest in the training, creativity, and critical thinking skills that are uniquely human. And recognizing AI's impact on our carbon footprint, we need to make sure that we’re investing in sustainability, ecopreneurs and nature-based solutions. If we face and address these concerns, it’s possible to envision new levels of abundance enabled by an expansible digital workforce that learns and grows more capable all the time.
The potential of agents isn’t limited to businesses—these technologies have the potential to profoundly enhance the lives of individuals as well. We’ll all have access to specialized agents that can navigate different parts of our lives. For example, every student will have an own always-on, personalized tutor– an agent embedded in their everyday technology that acts as an intelligent companion guiding them throughout their learning journey at every stage. Our personal agents, communicating with other agents, will help manage our daily routines, from ordering groceries for us to scheduling appointments.
AI agents are already transforming how we deliver healthcare. We know that doctors and nurses are facing tremendous burnout, and there are provider shortages in many communities. As one of the world’s largest medical systems has recently discovered using our platform, agents can alleviate administrative burdens, improving patient communication while giving providers the space to focus on complex cases that demand their expertise. Over time, patients will have access to an AI agent that reaches out to check on you after a procedure, reminding you to follow up on test results, and asking if you have any unexpected reactions that need to be addressed. It will monitor patient progress and even reschedule labs or appointments as needed, all while maintaining a detailed understanding of the patient’s medical history and ongoing treatment.
Of course, this new Agentic Era, like every technology throughout history, will bring about disruptions and risks that we ignore at our peril. Some companies will struggle to adapt. Nearly every job will change in some ways. And, yes, some will go away. In the past, we’ve seen companies and sometimes entire industries rise and fall with new inventions—jets, satellites, the Internet, the smartphone, renewable energy. Ultimately, however, these innovations create far more new jobs that they displace. In 1950, for example, 43 million Americans had jobs. By 2020, over 152 million Americans were employed. Multiple factors played a role, but that is more than 100 million new jobs in a period of profound technological change, many in categories that did not exist before. The key, as always, will be to invest in the education and training that equips workers and young people with the skills to succeed in the new jobs and industries to come.
The benefits AI agents bring both individuals and businesses will far outweigh the initial disruptions. After all, growth in a country’s GDP is the product of growth in the labor force and in productivity. With the labor force stagnating or even shrinking in some regions and industries, countries will need to rely more than ever on boosting productivity, especially in the services sector, which is now the bulk of modern economies. Today, with the human labor force growth stagnant in many places, exceptional productivity driven by a digital agent force is vital for GDP growth. Agents amplify human labor, driving innovation and efficiency. Productivity rose 2.2% in the third quarter of 2024, fueled in part by AI.
Finally, AI agents will drive innovation. It will continue to jumpstart countless new companies, just as the birth of the microchip more than 65 years ago spurred the creation of iconic companies like Apple, Dell, and Microsoft. (More than 5,000 new artificial intelligence companies have been funded in the U.S. alone over the last decade.) This too will create significant numbers of new jobs, both within tech and across the global economy.
All of this is a reminder that technology itself is neither good nor bad; what matters is how we use it. Without proper oversight and training data, autonomous AI can make choices that conflict with our wishes or even with human values or ethics, such as prioritizing profit over safety or discriminating against certain groups. Harnessing the power of agentic AI effectively will require a multistakeholder approach–businesses, governments, nonprofits, and academia working together to create guardrails and guidelines. We are already seeing some of this in efforts such as the framework by the G7 nations emphasizing accountability, transparency, safety and data privacy. Another example is the Bletchley Declaration by 28 countries and the European Union that emerged from the UK AI Safety Summit that I and other tech CEOs attended last year, agreeing to collaborate on AI safety and development.
AI itself can play a role in guiding us through the disruptions to come. As M.I.T. economist David Autor argues, AI has the potential to act as a leveling force, lowering barriers to entering the workforce by giving people access to tools and knowledge that were once reserved for a privileged few. Look, for example, at how our Agentforce platform is transforming the college-admissions process for the nonprofit College Possible. In many areas of the country, high school college counselors are responsible for many hundreds of students, making individual guidance almost impossible. In less than a week, College Possible used our platform to create a virtual college counselor for high school students. Now, any student can get college-prep support to augment sessions with a human counselor. This virtual counselor tracks the conversations in those sessions, has deep knowledge of colleges, and accesses student transcripts already housed within College Possible to provide guidance. This is a powerful expansion of labor potential, unlocking new ways to support students where traditional resources have been limited.
In fact, we’re already seeing similar possibilities in recruiting and human resources. Billions of resumes are submitted each year, but finding a job shouldn’t feel like submitting your resume into a void. The Adecco Group, one of the world’s largest recruiting companies, handles 300 million job applications a year but historically can only respond to 10%. It’s now using our platform to pre-qualify applicants, enabling it to engage with every applicant within 24 hours, while freeing human recruiters to work more closely with candidates on the way to job placements.
I’ve always believed that business is the greatest platform for change. Today, as we stand at the brink of this new Agentic Era, I’ve never been more confident in the transformative change that’s possible. AI has the potential to elevate every company, fuel economic growth, uplift communities around the globe, and lead to a future of abundance. If trust is our north star as we navigate this new landscape, agents will empower us to make a meaningful impact at an unprecedented scale.
