\u2b24 Benioff says the tech world is \u201chypnotized\u201d by the idea of Artificial General Intelligence, calling it far from today\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n
\u2b24 Tech leaders are divided\u2014some see AGI as imminent, others, like Benioff, call it speculative and overhyped.<\/p>\n
\u2b24 Eric Schmidt and others argue that chasing AGI has alienated the public and sidelined practical AI applications.<\/p>\n
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he is deeply skeptical of anyone who uses three particular letters: AGI, short for Artificial General Intelligence. Speaking on a recent podcast, Benioff remarked, \u201cWe have all been hypnotized by what is supposedly going to happen with AI.\u201d While many in the field of artificial intelligence express optimism about achieving human-level intelligence, others remain unconvinced. Benioff, it seems, falls squarely into the latter group.<\/p>\n
Salesforce has embraced artificial intelligence as a core pillar of its business strategy in recent years. However, Benioff made it clear that the idea of AGI, which is a loosely defined concept describing an AI system capable of performing complex tasks at the level of human intelligence, remains far from certain.<\/p>\n
During the podcast, host Harry Stebbings shared a story from the head of Amazon\u2019s AGI lab in San Francisco, who claimed that fewer than one thousand people worldwide could be \u201chighly valuable contributors\u201d to building a new foundational model. Benioff interrupted with a laugh: \u201cHead of AGI? That sounds like an oxymoron.\u201d He continued, \u201cI am very skeptical of anyone who uses those letters. I think we have all been hypnotized by this idea of what AI will become.\u201d<\/p>\n
The debate over artificial general intelligence is growing louder across Silicon Valley, as tech leaders argue about whether it is coming, when it might arrive, or whether it has already begun to take shape. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently said that GPT-5 has not yet reached general intelligence because it lacks the ability to \u201clearn continuously.\u201d At the same time, OpenAI has warned investors that money itself could lose meaning in a post-AGI world. Meanwhile, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has said that the absence of consistency and reasoning limits today\u2019s AI systems from reaching true general intelligence.<\/p>\n
Benioff believes we are still far from that milestone, but does not rule out the possibility entirely. \u201cI simply recognize that this is not the state of technology today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His comments align him with other technology leaders who are skeptical of the hype surrounding AGI. In a recent New York Times opinion piece, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and analyst Selina Xu wrote that Silicon Valley has become \u201cso obsessed\u201d with AGI that it has alienated the public and, worse, overlooked immediate opportunities to use existing AI technology more effectively. Others have warned against apocalyptic predictions about AGI\u2019s arrival. David Sacks, the White House\u2019s head of cybersecurity, commented that \u201cthe end of the world due to AGI has been greatly exaggerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite his doubts, Benioff remains enthusiastic about AI\u2019s potential. He praised large language models as \u201cthe most technically advanced systems ever created\u201d and acknowledged why people sometimes feel they are interacting with something human. Yet he drew a clear line: \u201cIt is not a person. It is not intelligent. It is not conscious. It has never suffered and it has no empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2b24 Benioff says the tech world is \u201chypnotized\u201d by the idea of Artificial General Intelligence, calling it far from today\u2019s reality. \u2b24 Tech leaders are divided\u2014some see AGI as imminent, others, like Benioff, call it speculative and overhyped. \u2b24 Eric Schmidt and others argue that chasing AGI has alienated the public and sidelined practical AI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":433304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":[],"meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_breakdance_hide_in_design_set":false,"_breakdance_tags":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29330],"tags":[29352,29368,29365],"audience-intent":[],"content-types":[],"country":[],"entity":[],"persona":[],"class_list":["post-420922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-enterprises-news","tag-technology-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"audience-intent","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience-intent?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"content-types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-types?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/menatech.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=420922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}