Global tech major Salesforce is focused on creating 'digital labour platforms', a senior company official said on Monday, making it clear that the company is not building artificial intelligence to "displace humans".
Vala Afshar, the chief digital evangelist for it, said that the customer relationship management (CRM)-focused company moved 3,000 employees into sales roles as it implemented its own agentic AI tools.
"We're building a workforce of AIs. But we're not building AIs to displace humans. We're building AIs to augment and create boundless potential in our humans," Afshar told reporters here.
The idea is to use digital technologies for repetitive tasks and free up human labour to work on creative, strategic, high-value, highly complex work, he added.
Stating that companies often either over- or under-utilise human talent, he said technology can help overcome any such challenges, as the agents will be given precise instructions on what job to do and how to do it.
As companies globally deploy agents, they are freeing up human talent, he said, adding that this talent will require reskilling.
"At Salesforce, we've added 3,000 men and women to our sales function that came from other lines of business inside of Salesforce. So, we grew our sales function by 3,000 without hiring 3,000 (people) because we were able to reskill these men and women who were doing repetitive, low-impact work that now agents are doing," Afshar said.
Afshar denied the notion of India not being well-positioned to be a leader in AI adoption because of the 'spirit of curiosity' and collaboration that he sees here.
The Salesforce economy alone will add $89 billion in new revenue to India by 2028, he added.
The consumer-facing companies are the ones that are leading AI adoption in India, he said.
