Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on AI agents, Microsoft, Seattle tech, and the future of humanity

Our guest this week is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who says he has never been as excited about anything in his career as he is about the latest developments in artificial intelligence — AI agents that can autonomously reason, plan, and take action on behalf of businesses.

Benioff is almost as strong in his negative sentiments toward Microsoft's Copilot. He calls Copilot the second coming of Microsoft's much-maligned "Clippy" Office assistant, and asserts that the Redmond company is giving AI a bad name by disappointing customers with underwhelming results and lax security.

We spoke with Benioff in advance of the general availability of the San Francisco company's Agentforce AI technology for sales and service. We also talked about Benioff's ownership of Time magazine, and what that means for his political involvement; and the status of his past pledge to turn Seattle into Salesforce's HQ2.

Related Links

• Is the world ready for autonomous AI? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff makes the case for agents
• Microsoft 365 Copilot rollouts slowed by data security, ROI concerns
• Salesforce founder Marc Benioff swears off politics after buying Time magazine
• Seattle will become Salesforce HQ2 via $15.7B Tableau deal, as Benioff gushes about talent pool

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.

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