Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on AI agents, Microsoft, Seattle tech, and the future of humanity
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2024
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
Our guest this week is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who says he has never been as excited about anything in his career as he is about the latest developments in artificial intelligence — AI agents that can autonomously reason, plan, and take action on behalf of businesses.
Benioff is almost as strong in his negative sentiments toward Microsoft's Copilot. He calls Copilot the second coming of Microsoft's much-maligned "Clippy" Office assistant, and asserts that the Redmond company is giving AI a bad name by disappointing customers with underwhelming results and lax security.
We spoke with Benioff in advance of the general availability of the San Francisco company's Agentforce AI technology for sales and service. We also talked about Benioff's ownership of Time magazine, and what that means for his political involvement; and the status of his past pledge to turn Seattle into Salesforce's HQ2.
Related Links
- Is the world ready for autonomous AI? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff makes the case for agents
- Microsoft 365 Copilot rollouts slowed by data security, ROI concerns
- Salesforce founder Marc Benioff swears off politics after buying Time magazine
- Seattle will become Salesforce HQ2 via $15.7B Tableau deal, as Benioff gushes about talent pool
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This GeekWire Podcast is brought to you by BECU. |
| 0:04.0 | Stay tuned to the break as Brian Westbrook interviews BECU's Stacey Black for today's money hack |
| 0:10.0 | about social media trends like loud budgeting. |
| 0:13.2 | And for more money hacks, check out GeekWire.com slash BECU. |
| 0:17.6 | Our guest this week is Salesforce CEO Markyoff, who says he's never been as excited |
| 0:25.8 | about anything in his career as he is about the latest developments in artificial intelligence, |
| 0:31.2 | AI agents that can autonomously reason, plan, and take action on behalf of businesses. |
| 0:38.0 | We're going to do this in a large scale way and give customers a level of success with AI that they've really never had before. |
| 0:44.9 | I'm super excited about it. |
| 0:46.3 | I think it's going to be incredible. |
| 0:47.9 | Benny Off is almost as passionate in his negative feelings about Microsoft's |
| 0:52.2 | co-pilot. |
| 0:53.4 | He calls it the second coming of Microsoft's |
| 0:56.0 | much-meligned Clippy Office Assistant, |
| 0:58.7 | and he asserts that the Redmond company is giving AI a bad name by disappointing customers with |
| 1:04.4 | underwhelming results and lacks security. I do think a lot of them have been |
| 1:08.5 | sold something from Microsoft that has been somewhat giving them the trough of disillusionment around AI and augmented the |
| 1:16.5 | hype cycle when in fact we're at a moment where they're going to be able to get tremendous |
| 1:20.9 | productivity and I think we need to kind of call that out so that we |
| 1:24.9 | sell them back into hey this is the moment you need to really jump into AI it's really the most |
| 1:30.8 | exciting moment that we've ever had. |
| 1:33.2 | But there was one thing that diverted him from those topics during our conversation |
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