Benioff Says AI Won’t Cut White-Collar Jobs at 2025 Summit

- Salesforce CEO predicts AI will enhance the workforce rather than replace it - The company prioritizes reskilling employees and automating select tasks with AI At the 2025 AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff dismissed claims from other industry leaders that artificial intelligence will cause mass job cuts in white-collar sectors, arguing instead that AI would act as a “radical augmentation” of the workforce. He pointed to Salesforce’s own strategies as a model for navigating AI-driven changes. During a live interview at the 2025 AI for Good Global Summit, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, "Maybe they have AI I don’t have. But in the AI I have, it’s not going to be some huge mass layoff of white-collar workers. It is a radical augmentation of the workforce." This optimistic view, however, contrasts with warnings from other leaders. For instance, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested that up to 50% of entry-level office jobs could vanish in the next five years, while Ford CEO Jim Farley projected a similar scale of disruption for American white-collar roles. On July 13, 2025, Business Insider reported that Salesforce is already recalibrating its workforce planning for AI. The company has temporarily paused hiring for specific roles, including software engineers and legal staff, to allow its AI-driven productivity initiatives to take root. Concurrently, Salesforce is emphasizing internal reskilling and workforce redeployment. In the last quarter, retrained employees filled more than 50% of newly created positions and transitioned into emerging areas like AI operations and product integration. In addition, Salesforce implemented its internal Agentforce initiative, a program that automates between 30% and 50% of tasks across various departments, including engineering, marketing, and customer support. Despite the hiring freeze for selected positions, Benioff stressed the ongoing importance of sales and customer-facing roles, describing them as vital for helping SMBs transition to AI technologies. According to Benioff, these capabilities will allow smaller companies to “radically amplify” their impact with AI tools. While Benioff remains forward-looking about AI’s ability to enhance jobs, some media outlets question the framing of such technologies. In January 2025, Axios highlighted potential misconceptions around terms like “digital employees,” arguing these tools merely automate tasks rather than replicate the complete roles of human workers. Salesforce’s balanced approach, therefore, offers a counterpoint to the broader fears of workplace disruption, positioning the company as a leading example of integrating AI into the workforce without resorting to mass layoffs.