The craze for development and the opportunities that artificial intelligence offers (or can offer) is in full swing. Even if this topic seems a bit worn out in the mainstream media, in the world of large corporations it is still one of the main topics of many meetings, conferences and presentations.
Entertainment giants are also trying their hand at these segments, wanting to create video games in an easier and faster way using AI. The biggest advocates of the development of this technology, such as Jensen Huang speak directly about the cooperation of people and artificial intelligence, which is intended to bring productivity to a completely new level.
However, in the environment of large technological players, there are those who are much more skeptical about the subsequent visions sold to the public. One of them is the CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff. In his opinion, the capabilities of AI are greatly exaggerated, and Microsoft is, among others, to blame for this state of affairs. 
Salesforce CEO says many AI capabilities are overblown
Some time ago, Benioff took part in the Rapid Response podcast, during which he praised the potential of artificial intelligence used specifically in Salesforce. Despite this, he used the airtime to draw attention to the aspect of “overhyping” AI by large enterprises. He claims that companies involved not only in the development but also in the sale of such technologies and solutions tell their customers things that are not true.
You may have heard from AI priests and priestesses at LLM model companies and from Microsoft and others that AI is now curing cancer and reversing climate change, so we all need to plug into these nuclear power plants to access these data centers. None of this is true.
– Marc Benioff
He maintained his opinion expressed during the podcast in a post on Twitter, where he stated directly that most of the potential of artificial intelligence is simply overrated. He added that current language models are in no way a path to creating AGI (Agi). artificial general intelligence — strong artificial intelligence).
He again emphasized that current AI models will not help, for example, effectively fight cancer. Finally, he added that for this reason, it seems crucial to properly “manage the expectations” of potential customers and at the same time use artificial intelligence to introduce changes that are realistic.
His post also included a link to an article by The Wall Street Journal, quoting the words of Yann LeCun, who claims that artificial intelligence in its current state is “dumber than a cat.” For this reason, fears related to her too rapid and uncontrolled development are simply unfounded, as are the excessive addition of new abilities to her.
A strong jab at Microsoft or a voice of reason?
Microsoft Copilot like Clippy from older versions of MS Office?
In the podcast, Benioff did not deny himself the opportunity to criticize Microsoft, which directly competes with Salesforce in the field of cloud data processing. In his opinion, it was the owners of the giant from Redmond who did “huge damage” to the entire development of AI.
I think Microsoft has done a huge disservice not only to our entire industry, but to all artificial intelligence research being conducted.
– Marc Benioff
In his narrative, he even went as far as to say that the company’s probably most important and loudest software, Copilot, is very similar to Clippy, a popular animated clip that was an assistant for MS Office users in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Apart from the fact that Salesforce actually competes with Microsoft, Marc Benioff’s words seem to be a voice of reason in times when almost everything is trying to be “AI-driven”. On the other hand, language models (even the seemingly simplest ones) are already able to facilitate the work of a large group of employees from various areas of the economy to a greater or lesser extent.
Ultimately, however, this whole discussion can be reduced to a simple, yet somewhat worn-out saying: “the market will tell.” The fate of products delivered, among others, will depend on the real demand of individual and corporate customers. by Microsoft.
