Salesforce CEO: Get ready for agents — the third wave of AI
The future of AI will be driven by agents that can deliver unprecedented customizable and personalized experiences, Salesforce’s CEO has said.
“This is the third wave of AI: agents,” Marc Benioff said in his opening keynote at the company’s Dreamforce 2024 event in San Francisco, calling the new Agentforce platform the next big step for the technology.
“This is what AI was meant to be,” he declared.
Third wave of AI
This year’s Dreamforce keynote focused on AI, with Agentforce taking center stage.
Agentforce was announced a few days before the event and is designed to improve productivity and efficiency in sales, marketing, trading and customer service.
Benioff emphasized that this heralded a new era for AI, one where “do-it-yourself AI” is a thing of the past and customers no longer have to do the heavy lifting themselves when it comes to implementing AI.
“Agentforce is the biggest breakthrough we’ve ever had in technology, and I think it’s the biggest breakthrough I’ve seen in artificial intelligence in a long time,” Benioff said.
“I don’t think you can do this yourself – you want a single, professionally managed, secure, reliable, available platform. You want the ability to deploy this Agentforce capability to all these people who are so important to your business.”
Agentforce bots can perform tasks autonomously, reducing the need for human supervision and improving overall business results.
“We’re going to use all of these agents, but we’re going to do it all within our Salesforce platform,” Benioff said. “This platform is Salesforce’s most important strategic move, and now this platform has the best AI in the world,” he added, calling this year’s event “the most important Dreamforce ever.”
“We have the data and the metadata and the workflow and the business process and the security model and the sharing model, and all of those things that we love and have used and are deeply committed to for 25 years. It turns out that those things make for more accurate AI.”
“It’s not just about what’s possible, it’s about what you’re going to make possible,” Benioff told the thousands in attendance at Dreamforce.
“Our goal is simple: to empower your people, create better experiences, and achieve better business results for your company.”
