One of the biggest cheerleaders in the tech industry, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, is really excited about generative AI. But even he admits that it might not live up to all the hype. And guess who he’s pointing fingers at? Microsoft, of course.
Just a month after Salesforce’s huge tech event, Dreamforce, where Benioff couldn’t stop talking up AI, especially in their own products, he’s now on a reality check tour. And he’s not holding back when it comes to dissing his main rival, Microsoft. Recently, he appeared on the podcast Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor Bob Safian.
When talking about AI’s potential, Benioff mentioned, “I’ve never been more excited about anything at Salesforce, maybe in my career.” But he made sure to warn everyone that “customers have been told things about enterprise AI, maybe AI overall, that are not true.” He went on to say, “I think Microsoft has done a tremendous disservice to not only our whole industry but all of the AI research that has been done.”
Benioff really didn’t hold back when it came to criticizing Microsoft Copilot’s accuracy and usefulness. He even compared Copilot to Clippy, Microsoft’s talking paperclip from the ’90s that wasn’t very popular. According to him, all the talk about AI curing cancer and climate change is just not true.
He’s not backing down from his previous comments where he said, “LLMs (Large Language Models) are not the direct bridge to AGI, and much of AI’s current potential is simply oversold. AI isn’t yet curing cancer or solving climate change as pundits claim.”
That was a direct hit at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Earlier this summer, Altman mentioned that with AI-enhanced health tech, maybe they would help discover cures for cancer. Benioff also brought up some research by Gartner about Microsoft Copilot, showing that only a quarter of organizations testing Copilot are planning a wider rollout. But hey, at least it’s a start, right?
Nevertheless, GenAI, as it is today, is not quite ready to replace humans in most scenarios. Even though Google’s NotebookLM can create AI hosts for podcasts, it’s hard to see how it will really change the more tedious tasks in many jobs.
One area where GenAI seems to be excelling is in AI agents, which fits right into Salesforce’s latest product, Agentforce. Many other tech companies and startups are also working on AI agent technologies, aiming to improve customer service and sales, particularly in prospecting.
While LLMs are being used in other areas like software development, especially with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, it’s clear that Microsoft has a strong foothold in the AI world beyond just office applications.
When even the people selling AI products are warning that AI might be overhyped, it’s probably time to reassess our expectations and focus on harnessing AI’s true capabilities.
