Analyst reviews charts as AI tools reshape daily work. Credit: Yan Krukau from Pexels via Canva.com
Salesforce is not only using AI, it’s reorganising around it. On June 26th 2025, CEO Mark Benioff claimed that artificial intelligence now completes over 30-50% of the company’s work. In terms of customer service, this isn’t just a technical update; it’s a statement of intent. By the time thousands of Salesforce employees have been laid off, a pressing question arises that goes beyond efficiency to encompass ethics, economy, and what AI-powered workforces are really like.
But what does half of the work actually mean? Is this technology executive showcasing his skills in public, or is this the future of white-collar employment?
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What Benioff said
At the AI Now event in Washington, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff made a bold claim that AI is now doing 30-50% of the work at Salesforce. The comment came as part of a larger conversation about how AI is reshaping current business operations, ranging from code generation to customer service.
Salesforce has spent the last year integrating AI into its production suite. From Einstein GPT for sales forecasting to automated customer support chatbots, this push has been loud, consistent, and external-facing.
Internally, Salesforce has also been deploying AI to replace or reduce the burden of tasks once performed by humans, including document processing, scheduling, and drafting internal communications.
Still, though 50% is a rather large number, and in the absence of transparency, it’s also unclear what kind of work is being referred to. For whom? And at what cost?
AI is replacing workers across industries.
This is occurring in a deeper reshuffling across white collar sectors. Companies can call it transformation, and the people call it a quiet culling.
Earlier this year, Duolingo made the shift to AI, replacing contract workers who had crafted language lessons, as well as moderating content. The company stated that it is now AI-first. Even support roles were not immune, as users reported slower responses and generic replies that drew backlash from loyal customers.
- In banking, Goldman Sachs boasts that its AI can condense an IPO document by 95% within minutes. This was work that was justified for a junior analyst, and now does not exist.
- HSBC is testing AI agents to automate 90% of its routine back-office tasks.
- Workday, which sells HR tools to help other companies hire and retain people, has now slashed over 1,700 roles, citing more organisation around the AI products.
This reads less like innovation and more like a structural surrender to automation. The same pattern is showing elsewhere.
- Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft are all reshaping teams with AI priorities.
- Intel is laying off staff associated with its chip divisions, citing a shift toward “AI-enhanced architecture.”
- Even customer service at Amazon is being thinned out in favour of LLM-based support.
This is a trend to focus mainly on AI while quietly removing people from companies. If you’re an employee wondering what that means at your desk, the message is much less uplifting because with AI ramping up in 2025 and making jobs relatively obsolete, expect the unexpected when it comes to your job as well.
Roles being replaced
The Salesforce AI transformation didn’t just happen in a vacuum; it followed a series of layoffs. Between 2013 and 2024, the company reduced its global workforce by more than 10%. For the thousands of jobs that have disappeared, many of those roles are now being replaced by AI-enhanced productivity.
But workers online are already pointing out the disconnect. If machines now do half the company’s work, then whose work was that? And what happened to the teams that used to do it?
Insiders are suggesting that they are replacing roles incrementally, from support agents, content writers, to even HR and administrative tasks.
And it’s not only Salesforce headlines that companies like Oracle, Microsoft, and Hubspot have already integrated AI into sales, customer service, and analytics. But none of them have publicly admitted that their workforce output is now AI-generated.
If the AI is responsible for this work, and things go wrong, is it the developer, the employer, or the machine itself? As AI-driven decisions shape customer outcomes, data analysis, and even legal recommendations, companies need clearer frameworks not just for productivity but for ethics, compliance, and liability.
Salesforce may be ahead in the race. However, if the path isn’t defined, the entire industry risks operating blindly.
