„I’ve reduced it from 9,000 head to about 5,000 because I need less heads” - tech giant boasts job cuts thanks to AI

The dynamic development of artificial intelligence benefits corporate directors who are replacing current employees with AI. One of the reasons given is the lack of strikes and requests for a raise from digital language models. Sometimes group layoffs involve a large part of departments or the entire company, which happened, among others, at Marc Benioff's Salesforce (via Kron4).

The CEO laid off 4000 customer support department employees

Delegating certain tasks to artificial intelligence seems to be an increasingly popular trend. Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, joined it. The CEO recently appeared on The Logan Bartlett Show podcast, where he outlined his actions related to AI, including reducing the number of full-time vacancies by several thousand.

During the conversation, Benioff revealed that he had reduced employment in the customer support department from 9000 employees to just 5000. According to him, the company no longer needed them due to the implementation of artificial intelligence. Despite layoffs, Salesforce is expected to operate more efficiently by automating some processes:

According to Marc Benioff, this way it is possible to respond weekly to 10,000 leads left by customers interested in cooperation. Unfortunately, AI did not help the company defend against hackers, because around the first half of August, companies cooperating with Salesforce and using the Salesforce Drift platform fell victim to a hacker attack.

Even though the number of layoffs at Marc Benioff's company may seem huge, some people have opted for more drastic moves. For example, Eric Vaughan from IgniteTech had to lay off as much as 80% of the staff because they did not share his vision of AI integration. However, it was not about replacing employees, but about hiring people who would be ready to cooperate with artificial intelligence, at least that's what could be interpreted from Vaughan's words.

According to Mo Gawdat, former head of Google X, directors, such as Benioff, should not be excited about layoffs that allow them to implement AI. Gawdat claims that the time will soon come when artificial intelligence will also take the place of unnecessary CEOs.

• tech
• AI / Artificial Intelligence