Salesforce CEO Mark Beoff recently expressed his unique insights into the future development of artificial intelligence in a "Wall Street Journal" podcast. He believes that the current craze for large language models (LLMs) has reached its peak, and the focus of future artificial intelligence development should shift to autonomous agents that can perform tasks autonomously. He pointed out that chatbots driven by LLMs are not the key to technological progress. The real breakthrough lies in autonomous agents that can independently complete tasks such as sales communication and marketing activities, thus significantly improving corporate efficiency.
Marc Benioff, CEO of the American cloud computing software company Salesforce, recently stated on the Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything” podcast that the future of artificial intelligence lies in autonomous agents rather than large languages. Chatbots driven by models (LLMs). He pointed out that we are currently at the upper limit of large language models.
Benioff mentioned that in the past few years, everyone's enthusiasm for ChatGPT has been too high, leading ordinary consumers to believe that the capabilities of artificial intelligence are far beyond reality. He believes that large language models are not the key to technological progress and that future AI development should focus on autonomous agents that can perform tasks independently. For example, these agents can conduct sales communications or marketing campaigns, thereby making the company more efficient.
Salesforce has already started to realize this vision with the launch of pre-built AI agents for customer service automation. Benioff emphasized that these tools can enhance employee productivity, increase corporate profits and revenue, and bring the company closer to its customers. He also expressed caution against the current over-publicity of artificial intelligence capabilities, especially the exaggerated publicity made by overly optimistic "AI missionaries" and "AI evangelists", believing that this is a serious misleading to corporate customers.
Benioff pointed out that companies should use these technologies to enhance their competitiveness rather than be fooled by illusory visions. He believes that companies that can effectively apply autonomous agent technology will stand out in the market competition. In addition, OpenAI is also preparing to launch an agent called "Operator" in January 2025, which can independently perform tasks such as writing code or booking travel. Meanwhile, Nvidia, one of the world's largest companies, is driving the trend, with CEO Jensen Huang saying enterprise adoption of autonomous agents is growing rapidly.
Highlight:
Benioff believes that the current large language model has reached its upper limit and should turn to autonomous agent technology in the future.
Salesforce has launched AI agents to improve customer service automation and business efficiency.
Companies such as OpenAI and Nvidia are also actively developing autonomous agent technology to promote market changes.
All in all, Beoff's views represent a new thinking on the development direction of artificial intelligence, emphasizing the importance of autonomous agent technology, and warning companies to avoid blindly following the trend, view the development of AI technology rationally, and choose a technical route suitable for their own development. Take advantage of future competition. This has important guiding significance for enterprises to make correct strategic decisions in the AI wave.