Bold Names: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and the AI ‘Fantasy Land’
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Hey, future of everything listeners, danny, here today, we're bringing you something a little different in our feed from some familiar voices. W. S. J.

Holmness, tim higgens and Christopher mims are hosting a new interview series called bold names, where they talk to the leaders of the bold named companies you read about in the journal every day. This time it's a conversation with the C. E.

O of sales force, mark. He's a tech leader, a billionaire and pretty outspoken about what A I could mean for the future of business. Give IT a listen, we think you're like IT.

And if you want more from the series, head over to the techniques briefing feed. There's a link in our show notes. Okay, onto the episode.

If you've heard of mark benny off IT might be because he spent more than a billion dollars building the tallest skyscraper in saper, cisco, now the world headquarters for sales force, the twenty five year old enterprise software company he leads. Or maybe it's because he spent one hundred and ninety million dollars of his own money to buy time magazine. But if his latest big bet pays off, someday he might be known for something totally different, namely replacing thousands and eventually millions of White collar workers with AI agents.

Ben off is one of the most outspoken voice in tech. He doesn't keep his opinions to himself. And as he tells IT, A I agents are the future. They never get tired, never have to take a break, and they're potentially much more autonomists than today's limited AI chat pots. But and this is important, he doesn't buy tice some of what he calls the false promises around A I right now.

Number one, everyone is not going to need their nuclear power planet to run their data signers, this whole energy fantasy. And number two, that everybody has to start D I. Wine and building themselves. Let's just take this down one by one.

He has some harsh words for his competitors at microsoft and others racing to hop on the A I train, and some advice for the millions of us who were along .

for the ride. And I think we all got drunk on the ChatGPT kuai. Oh my gosh, cancer is cared. It's like, guys, we've got to keep these things in perspective from .

the wall street journal. I'm tim higgs and i'm Christopher mims.

This is bold names. You'll here from the leaders of the bold named companies featured in the pages of the wall street journal today. We ask mark, any off thinks the hyper on AI is overblown.

Why did you almost change in the name of his company to reflect his new focus on ai? Before we get started, we reached out to microsoft about mark beney s claims. The company declined to comment for this podcast.

right. Mark, if wasn't that long ago that folks were saying A, I might be in some way the end of sales force. And now you are, of course, very excited about A I.

I heard that you are thinking of changing the name of the company, the agent force. For the uninitiated, what's an A I agent? Why are you so excited about IT OK?

Well, number one, let's take IT from the tip. Top sales force is the largest supply of enterprise A I in the world today will do more than two trillion transactions this week of R A I platform, which we call einstein. We've had that around for about a decade.

IT is incredible. IT works across every one of our customer touch points and across our platform. And its done predictive and now does generate and because we have such awesome ai, we've also done a huge amount of A I research and contributions to the A I community. So this kind of false narrative, one of many false narrative that I heard that sales for somehow is not a leader in A I or hasn't been a major leader I A decade, is false narrative.

And you've said that A I being delivered by your competitor microsoft, you've compared IT to clippy. Um and for those you don't remember, of course clippy was that in ne helper that would pop up in microsoft d and offer help for advice and it's the bud of many jokes about the late nineties. Anyway, that's a bold claim considering that microsoft is pouring tens of billions in the copilot. When you compare copilot to clippy, what do you mean?

You're right. Microsoft copilot is the new microsoft clippy and the reality is that clippy came out because they're like we have an agent base future, which we've all agreed since we watched the movie space policy or a minority report or terminator. We know what agents can do.

So we have to get super clear right now, what are we really trying to do? Microsoft has deceived our customers by telling them two things. One, that the the future of their interaction with A I is copilot, and they need copilot now will transform their business.

And two, they need to build their own models and train their own models. And when you put these two things together, you're going to transform your entire enterprise. Well, guess what? Where is the list of customers? I've done that. And I really know you don't have a list of ten customers in front of you who have transformed their business with microsoft copilot and driving their own models. And this is a fantasy land, and I can walk you through peace by peace right now. Why that is technically false and why customers do have an opportunity right now to transform themselves, to change, to evolve, to go to a whole new level with A I IT is a well moment for everybody and customers that I bring into, say, hey, look, let me build your agent in a few minutes with your existing meta data and data and business process and then they say back to me, oh my gosh, we have been notified in the thinking that we need to build and rebuild these models and D I Y R A I.

But on their last earnings call, microsoft CEO satin adela said we have never seen adoption of an office sweet product be as fast as IT has been for. Copilot said there's been sixty percent year over year growth. He has said that corporate customers are coming back and buying more license is not fewer. Those numbers have to mean something. Why is the the clippy of A I so popular?

Number one, there is a huge demand for AI products in the enterprise, but this idea that microsoft signalize the industry, that this is the piano, this is the master of A I for the enterprise, is a false profession. And I just get down to just show me in customers who are transforming themselves with this approach. And I have a Better approach that works that you can use today and that customers are having incredible impact with.

And if you talk to sai in the delay about this, you must move in the same circles.

Of course, I talk to a lot of people and I tell them this, this idea that these A I prison processes are out there telling the world things about A I that are not true is a huge disservice to these enterprise y customers who K N number one, increase their margins, increase their revenge argument, their employees, improve their customer relationships.

Yes, you can do all of these things with the I, but this other part that we are all living in minority report. No, we're not there yet. Maybe we'll be there one day.

Terminator, maybe we'll be there one day. War games. I hope we will never be there one day to me.

Part of what special about your agents is they're working within the scaffolding of how your software already works. So how do you define agents and sales watch? How are years working in a way that can deliver a real result?

Let's also extend the false prophet one more second before we jump in to that. Number one, everyone is not going to need their own nuclear power planet to run their data nors this for energy fantasy in number two, that everybody has to start D I. Wine and building themselves. Let's just take this down one by one and technically let us walk through exactly how we're going to do IT.

Yeah, let's start there. So how are your agents at sales force working in a way that can deliver a real result?

All right. Let just take you from the tip top, which is we have a customer wide, the textbook company. They're great if your kids are in school and their textbooks from Willy.

So Willy, typically, who's been on our platform, by the way, for more than a decade, they're awesome. You know they use our sales product on our service product, in our marketing product, on our commerce product, analytics product. So what slack usually about this moment they're like, you know, business is scaling.

We need go higher all these people, just for the next ninety days. It's our season, let's roll. And we said, Willy, what if your workforce had no limits, you and we don't have to hire all these people like once a year? exactly. And we're going to energy ce to not only any sales force or any service force, are your new marketing force, are your new commerce force, we're going to introduce you to wireless new agent force. And they said we not believe IT.

And to be clear, these AI agents are drop in replacement for the the seasonal customer service agents that while they would Normally have to hire during this peak of the textbook season.

sales agents, service agents, so service agents, basically, I got the wrong text book, please send me the new one. Sales agents, hey, we know you bought that book last year. Have you thought about buying the new one this year? Or marketing agent, did you know we have a promotion happening at widely for the next generation books? But also build your own, roll your own, and you're not gonna ire, your own engineer to do IT.

You're not gonna ire. People not programmed. They had to become, by the way, ten years ago, A I experts, when we entered predictive, then they had to become data experts.

And now they are going to become agent experts. And they will be agent blazers in the way that they are, trail blazers. Today I feel like .

we're talking to the oracle here in the matrix. You're telling us about what E, C, R, false promises. What about nuclear?

Some of arrivals are talking about how nuclear energy is going to be required to run all these server farms at power AI. And there's this kind of rush around the world to generate a lot more power for this stuff. And sounds like you believe IT you're holding up a red pill.

The truth. Here you go, here you go. Here go, baby. Okay, listen, we all know where we're going.

We saw the movies. We all know we want to have these incredible things. okay? But what it's going to a require is software engineering.

And as somebody has been a soft engineer for forty years or forty five years, I can just tell you that I love software. And this is the next version of software. Lets not get away from mad like even LLM. We all know those are large language models.

We all remember the first time or on ChatGPT and said, actually, I just said, what is the best chicken soup recipe and it's like, don't worry, I got your backmarker and it's like here, IT is amazing software, but L, S are not a data storage mechanism. We don't even know how the data is stored in the L M. After the trained, okay, but IT is a cool intelligence engine that we can connect r data and data abase and meta data and different pieces to, and then bring IT all together in a really smart way. IT doesn't abstract from also managing your data and all the other safety security sharing model.

but you're not planning on buying any nuclear powerful anes.

We look at our capex on our income statement, you know to see its scaling crazy and where number one, now why is that? Because our platform Operate in a highly efficient way. And look, this is an exciting moment.

But in two thousand eight, once Steve jobs called at mark that near the iphone, you're gona love this. That was also very excited. And I felt the same way.

I can't believe what's happening and now I go, I can't believe what's happening. And in the same way with my customers who I love, like, oh, i'm going to transform your businesses with the phone. Now i'm saying, oh, i'm going to transform your businesses.

V I, giving an example of A I power V I disney. So here's disney. They use us on every customer to you go to the disney store, they've got disney plus the calls and or disney guide.

If you go to the party now with your kids, they are walk getting through the lines. And if you looked down and look at your disney guidance phone, you'll see sales force and slack on the phone. And here's the funny thing, like because I go to this new land about four times a year and i'm on my way to rise.

The resistance is a great ride, but very technical. And IT breaks a lot is just that is just the nature of the ride and all the sun. The guy is gna turn to me and say, on mark rises now, but we're going to bring you to another robot, ede.

Where do you want to go? Instead, the agent is gonna call him on the phone and say, hey, I know you're on the tour of mark rises down. I really looked at mark's ride history.

I know every right is ever been on the last twenty years. And by the way, I just scan across the whole park to look at flow control at every ride. I recommend you taken to tune town.

And i'm on my way to tune town. The A, I is able to do things that we cannot do as humans. We've just .

heard how mark, any off is reshaping the company. He covered. What does that mean? He agrees with the idea that all companies have to be LED by their founders to succeed. Here is advice for how every one of us can Operate in founder mode. That's after the break.

How do you start to lay the foundation for responsible AI in your organization? Here's fator. Bonnier is IBM consultants global leader for trust or the ai IT .

starts with asking the question, what is the kind of relationship that we all ultimately want to have with A I? The purpose of A I is not meant to display human beings. That is meant to all meant human intelligence. Soon, as you have a glimmer in your eye about how you think you might want to, U Z, I then asking the questions like what would be required in order to earn people's trust in such a model.

In the valley, there's been a lot of talk about the power of founders, something called founder mode, which is essentially this idea that founders have more power, more effective and bringing about change or running their companies. I got to imagine you really have some thoughts on founder mode. You are you advocate of this idea that really the founders, the one that can can affect change.

I don't really buy under the whole founder mode thing, by the way. So I think the founder mode, I given an f also, but I think my eh is that is a fail. I think every executive should be in founder mode.

And the founder mode thing, almost a masculinity, mal. Executives from feeling that they can be in founder. Listen, at the end of the day, at least the founder within all of us have that energy inside us. Maybe I should write a book. I don't know .

that part of this kind of a conversation is debatable is around strong leadership, has been some of CEO struggling or voicing concern about return to the office. We've seen amazon pulling everyone back five days a week. Where is you're thinking these days on work from home?

It's such a great question. And i'll tell you that, you know, first of all, you're talking to someone who's always work from home and you know because you're seeing me on video, not just audio, I am at home, you seen my dogs walking around and I have that, how A D H D thing going on. So I need like a environment with very low stimulus, and i'm just more effected from home.

I just do is help. And we've grown sales force to thirty eight billion and seventy five thousand employees. And i've done IT from home. And more than twenty five percent of all the sales for employees have always been, always been remote. And a few years ago, there's this pandemic.

And in the pandemic, we all had to go home, and then we are all at home, and all the, we all discovered this thing called the, and then we bought our microphone midi, and we all sitting. They are talking each other and going, oh, this is actually pretty good. So, you know, we can be effective from home and we can be effective in the office.

I think that for some executives, especially the new ones who are coming in on boarding kids right at the school, her meaning people collaboration, you know the the whole idea of the social environment in the office, I think being in the office is extremely important. And I think that when I was in that the zone for my own career, that swim chair experience where i'm in my chair and then i'm looking at the person next to me and they are talking to about what to do and how to do IT, that's really important, but isn't important for everybody and is appropriate for body maybe. But wow, we have these great new tools that we can do so much from whereever we are.

We can work from anywhere. That's been one of the great things. And the A. I. revolution. And agents these agents, by the way, they're also you know not in the office, they're working for help.

That sounds like you have a new once uh, kind of view on this. We're not going to see some kind of sudden emergence of a five day Mandate for everybody anytime soon. The sales worth at .

the end of the day, you're either delivering the value or you're not. I don't really care, honestly, if somebodies at home or not, are they getting the results? Are they not?

My guru in management is how janine, who wrote the book managing you, had a great phrase, managers must manage. You know, managers must manage. You're either getting the results or not getting the results so that just our new world.

So let's not the great everything we've invested in, in the last you know, twenty years, we've done amazing jobs with the technology, the computer, the wifi, the phone, the codex like the video codex that we're looking at. The quality of the video right now is amazing. That's the compression decompression and that you know um algorithms that are alleged us to have this experience. You know with all three of us at home and talking on this thing, we've invested massive amounts in technology. Let's let's really use IT.

We've just heard how AI agents are going to transform the world of work when we come back. Mark bin off talks about when he thinks human level A I will arrive and why he's backing a startup from one of the pioneers of modern A I, who was trying to create smart machines and a radical new way.

So there's one of the area when to ask you about agents, your own time magazine, which is a fact about you, I think a lot of folks don't realize. And when you're thinking about A I and agents, does that thinking ever intersect with how you think about the media and and specifically how time or other outlets are preparing themselves for the future?

Is the A I taken over? no. He has A, I cared cancer? no.

This A I Q in climate change? no. So we have to keep things in perspective here. We have incredible tools to augment our productivity, to augment our employees, to prove our margins, to prove our revenues, to make our companies fundamentally Better, have higher fidelity relationships with our customers. But we are not at that moment that we've seen in these crazy movies.

And maybe we will be one day, but that is not where we are today. We have to keep this temporary correct. And this idea, like i've heard you don't need to manage systems of record OS sofa rights itself.

Now you know that technology has improved to the point where we don't even need enterprise offered. It's like, oh, of that is awesome. And what planet are you on? Because i'm on, and I could tell you with the current technology can and cannot do, and I can do a lot of cool things, but IT cannot do everything.

So what is your prediction for when agi is this is kind of that god like A I that uh can rival human intelligence. You see in the next twenty .

not come in at Christmas and it's probably not coming in Christmas next year. Look, I actually figured are hitting the upper limits of the o EMS right now. It's a very cool new model.

By the way, if you look at the history, V I is a history of models. And we have the new model they were hanging out with. But these models, what happens is the history, these models, is they mature, and then we kind of get into an AI winner as well, ready for the next one.

Like fake fai, who runs A I at stanford, SHE just started this new company. I'm an invest. And SHE believes that the next model will be multi sensory.

And this idea that there is gonna to be many, many different components, things, cameras and audio, all these things in four dimensions, not just in the dimensions of our current physical world, but also time and the ability for to spend all these things. It's not an L O M, but she's going to have to take her engineers and they're writing their code and working on IT and on, on, on IT. Maybe they'll release at some point in the future and at some point that may replace the O M.

And we just have to be careful how we think about these things. So we have to get back to reality. And I think we all got drunk on the ChatGPT cool laid where we're like.

And what is the a chicken supervise? And can you summarize these ten articles? Oh my gosh, this is cured. It's like, guys, we've got to keep these things in perspective. It's a tool, and I hope that we're using IT to improve humanity and making .

things Better. Mark, any off? Thank you for coming on our show.

It's great to talk to always thank you for having me. I'm so grateful you .

and that's bold names for this week like a laval and just a ten or our sound designers, Jessica also route our thing music.

We got some help this week from Julie chain catha mills up Scott side away. And for a patterson for even more, check out our columns on W S. J. That com. I'm tim higgins .

and Christian for me.

Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discuss what responsible A I looks like in practice. Here's fator point endurance from IBM consulting, again, on why that begins with data.

My favorite definition of the word data is an architecture, common experience. A I is like a mirror that reflects our biases back towards us.

But we have to be brave enough and introspective enough to look into the mirror and decide, does this reflection actually alive to my organization? Values, if IT aligns, be transparent about? Why did you pick the data that you did? If IT doesn't like that, when you know you need to change your entire approach.

learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM dot come flash consulting.