Foreword
by Marc Benioff, CEO and Co-founder, Salesforce
I'm a member of the last generation of CEOs to manage an all-human workforce.
I can honestly say that when I co-founded Salesforce in a one-bedroom apartment on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco in 1999, I had no idea I would ever write that sentence. Artificial intelligence has come very far, very fast – and we've only just begun to realize its impact on our work and our lives.
Machines are now able to do things that would have seemed miraculous even 10 years ago. AI is able to carry on natural conversations, answer complex questions, summarize call transcripts, create images and videos based on simple prompts, and even write poetry.
As impressive as all this is, it's just a start. We have entered into an era when AI agents cannot just chat but also think, make decisions on their own, and take action on those decisions. AI agents are already taking their place as part of a hybrid agent-human workforce – what I called a “global digital labor platform” when we launched Salesforce Agentforce in 2024.
Agentforce is the first trusted platform that enables global enterprises to put AI agents to work, alongside a human workforce, to enhance efficiency and prime productivity. It is a major transformation, one that is already providing value to thousands of our customers around the world.
This agentic AI moment is like nothing I've seen before in my career. It's as important as the introduction of the Internet, which made Salesforce.com ...
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