Tens of thousands of tech workers have lost their jobs in The tech sector has been hit by sweeping layoffs in recent months amid growing AI usage — crossing the 100,000 mark last month. A growing number of jobs are now being done by artificial intelligence with many roles including customer service and data entry. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revealed during a recent interview that nearly 50% of work in the company was now being done by AI. Despite the recent changes, the company insists that it not planning mass layoffs anytime soon.
“AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at Salesforce now. All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that before we were doing. We can move on to do higher-value work,” Benioff said during a recent interview on The Circuit with Emily Chang.
He also reiterated the transformative power of AI and the way it could either ‘replace’ humans or ‘enhance’ their work. Benioff however opined that the recent technological advances would support and improve human work rather than taking it away from people. The Salesforce CEO also noted that AI could make some jobs disappear while others were created.
The company has reportedly made major changes in recent months — giving new roles to thousands of employees and pausing hiring for engineering jobs. A recent report by Fortune indicated that the San Francisco-based software company redeployed more than 50% of the people already working with them during the first quarter of the year.
“Salesforce is already seeing AI drive sharply increased productivity in some key functions via our platform Agentforce. Agents managed by customer service employees, for example, are resolving 85% of their incoming queries. In research and development, 25% of net new code in the first quarter was AI-generated. This is freeing human teams to accelerate projects and deepen relationships with customers,” Benioff wrote in a Financial Times op-ed last week.
