Thus far, companies like Google and Amazon had said that AI was writing around 30 percent of their code. But Salesforce has taken things a bit further.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has said that AI is now doing 30 to 50 percent work at the company now. “You said you won’t hire any more coders at Salesforce. And you’ve said today’s CEOs will be the last to manage all-human workforces. What does this mean for businesses?” Benioff was asked in an interview.
“I’m coming from a meeting with my head of engineering,” Benioff replied. “And we’re looking at productivity levels of 30 to 50 percent this year in key functions like engineering, coding and support,” he said.
“You’re saying AI is doing 30-50 percent of the work?” the interviewer incredulously asked him.
“AI is doing 30-50 percent of the work at Salesforce now,” Benioff simply replied. “And i think that will continue. All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that we were doing before. And we can move on to do higher-value work. And I do think that CEOs have to make sure that their values are in the right place, and their values bring value,” he added.
“Could an AI agent replace you one day?” the interviewer asked him.
“I hope so,” Benioff replied as the interviewer laughed. “I mean of course I’m partially kidding. But we’re becoming more automated,” he said.
Salesforce isn’t the only tech company that’s saying that much of its work is now being done by AI. Google and Microsoft have indicated that around 30 percent of their code is now written by AI. But Salesforce has taken things a step further, and said that this automation extends to other functions like services and support, and goes up to 50 percent of the total work at the company. Salesforce has simultaneously said that it won’t hire any more software engineers because of the gains it’s seeing from AI. And if these trends continue, these could lead to more hiring freezes and job cuts in the coming years.