Many tech companies have handed out the pink slips in recent months, to budget for higher costs that will be needed to run AI systems. Salesforce is one of the many to act on the changing trends in the industry.
But it seems the tech giant is not highly confident about its move, especially after laying off around 4,000 of its employees this year.
These companies feel that automation could help them cut down hiring costs and move them to other departments where more human workforce is needed. And it looks like the GenAI party bubble seems to be slowly dying, at least for those at Salesforce who are not completely sold on its value and purpose.
GenAI Good But Should It Replace Humans?
The company has been quoted in an interview where it talks about the excitement around large language models (LLMs) one year ago, how things have turned since then. “All of us were more confident about large language models a year ago,” Sanjna Parulekar, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Salesforce was quoted saying by The Information.
The executive also pointed out their approach is now more focused automation, which hints at human intervention, and also questions the credibility of LLMs for tech companies like these. These instances make it clear that AI is reliable but only to some extent. You still need to train them and handle situations on their feet, something that AI models are yet to master, and that makes it hard to replace human expertise.
Having said that, AI has shown its abilities to work in controlled spaces, at least for now, and unless you have human intelligence-like AI models available in a larger volume, companies might have to revisit their hiring/costing plans with AI and employees in balance.
AI Going Rogue A Big Concern Too
AI has its limits but is also capable of going rogue, something that might not sit well within the enterprise setup. Businesses need AI functioning at 100 percent all the time, or else their heavy investment could become a problem in the long term.
